5 Stocks Seeing Big Analyst Upgrades

By Larry Gellar Today, we’ll be taking a look at the latest rating upgrades from Wall Street analysts. While Boeing (BA) and International Paper (IP) are receiving modest praise, JC Penney (JCP) and MetLife (MET) are putting together plans to fundamentally change their business. Meanwhile, Pandora (P) remains an interesting speculative play. Let’s see what’s been happening with these 5 stocks: Deutsche Bank upgraded JC Penney from Sell to Hold and applauded the company’s restructuring efforts. In fact, those restructuring efforts are part of the reason that the stock has jumped nearly 50% from its August lows. One major change that JC Penney has made is the hiring of Ron Johnson, who was the CEO of Apple’s (AAPL) retail stores. While Johnson is expected to have a huge impact on JC Penney, JC Penney has already stated that investors shouldn’t expect any miracles in the just-finished 4th quarter of 2011. In many ways, JC Penney is getting all of its bad news out of the way now while it’s still plausible that Johnson hasn’t had an impact yet. For example, JC Penney has had some serious cash flow issues. $389 million flowed out of the company during fiscal year 2011,…