After removing Gamestop Corp from their conviction buy list in
November, sell side Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Higginbotham today
is pushing investors to buy GameStop shares, with a price target of
$29. He cites two specific catalysts including GameStop's
holiday sales report coming on January 7th and their full earnings
report in March. Higginbotham believes GameStop will meet
expectations and thus rise as a result of low expectations built
into valuation. He also mentions his belief that the company
has some M&A potential.
This follows an article over the weekend in Barron's mentioning
GameStop as a top trade for 2010, according to Goldman Sachs' top
strategist, David Kostin.
"Goldman's Kostin suggests leaning on companies with
high operating leverage that now are scraping the bottom of their
profit-margin cycles, and those that are growing in the BRIC
countries. Also, "companies with high free-cash-flow yields are
likely to pursue mergers or return cash to shareholders via
buybacks and dividends," he says."
Higginbotham stated that he believes share buybacks are in the
cards for GameStop in 2010.