Thomson Reuters shares climb on upgrade

The increases occurred as markets staged massive recoveries on positive news: a fiscal stimulus plan in Britain and in the United States a rescue plan for Citigroup and the announcement of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic leadership team.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Drew McReynolds raised his rating on Thomson Reuters to Outperform from Sector Perform. The upgrade reflected the stock’s recent sharp retreat, in which the company’s shares have lost 40 per cent of their value in the last three months.

The analyst also thinks Thomson Reuters is taking an unfair hit from investors’ poor views of the firm’s Markets Division.

“Although we expect the operating environment for the markets division to remain extremely difficult through 2011 we believe (the stock prices indicate) an overly pessimistic decline scenario for the division,” McReynolds wrote. He trimmed his price target to $30 from $35.

Thomson Reuters’ London shares gained 15.66 per cent to 1,226 pence while those in New York gained 14.59 per cent to $23.33. The Toronto shares gained 10.79 per cent to C$28.75 and on NASDAQ the gain was 15.35 per cent to $111.62. ■