Applied Materials price target raised to $135 from $120 at Needham

Needham analyst N. Quinn Bolton raised the firm’s price target on Applied Materials to $135 from $120 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The company’s Q1 results were "in line" but it was the ICAPS group – IoT, Communications, Automotive, Power and Sensors – that "stole the show", with new bookings more than offsetting leading edge memory and logic weakness, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm further notes that the stock is exposed to the secular growth of WFE, and in particular the deposition and etch segments that have outperformed WFE in the last cycle.