Al Root

DuPont shares were up in early trading Monday after picking up a new Buy rating on Wall Street.

Tariff-related declines have made shares of the specialty materials and chemicals maker attractive.

On Sunday, KeyBanc analyst Aleksey Yefremov upgraded DuPont stock to Buy from Hold, and established a new price target of $81.

DuPont stock was up 2.8% at $60.56, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 1.3% and 0.9%, respectively.

Stocks were benefiting from President Trump's decision to exclude smartphones and some electronics from his most severe import tariffs on China, though Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that tariffs on the semiconductor sector were coming.

"We take a first crack at reflecting the tariff uncertainty in our estimates and refresh our recession downside analysis in this preview," wrote Yefremov.

DuPont was hit particularly hard by tariffs. Coming into Monday trading, DuPont shares were down about 21% since President Trump's April 2 tariff announcement. The company has significant operations in the Asia Pacific region, which includes China, and Asia Pacific sales accounted for about 43% of the company's 2024 total.

"Given the sell-off in DuPont shares...and the administration's recent steps on de-escalating the tariff uncertainty, we upgrade DuPont," added the analyst. "We view DuPont as a high-quality name that can grow Ebitda mid-single-digits to high-single-digits through the [economic] cycle."

Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

Yefremov also noted the strong balance sheet, and called the company's water and electronics business world-class. DuPont's debt-to-estimated Ebitda ratio, a common measure of balance sheet strength, is less than two times, according to FactSet. That's generally considered a safe ratio.

Since April 2, the average analyst price target dropped to about $96 from $101. Overall, 81% of analysts covering DuPont stock have Buy ratings. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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April 14, 2025 07:31 ET (11:31 GMT)

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