J.B. Hunt price target lowered to $183 from $185 at Evercore ISI

Evercore ISI analyst Jonathan Chappell lowered the firm’s price target on J.B. Hunt to $183 from $185 and keeps an Outperform rating on the shares. Entering Q3 earnings season, the “somewhat” good news for the transports group is that the quarterly fade in important bottom-line drivers was “likely not too damaging to still-modest expectations,” with little, but still some, risk to Q3 EPS forecasts. However, the bad news is that the typically stronger Q4, for which varying levels of uplifts are baked into estimates, is starting off on a soft path and the fundamental outlook points to risk to Q4 projections, the analyst tells investors in a Surface Transportation group preview note.