Broker tips: Anglo American, TUI Travel, Precious metal miners

15th Feb 2013 10:57

Jefferies is 'becoming more positive' on Anglo American after the mining giant reported better-than-expected results for 2012 on Friday morning, but kept its 'hold' rating for the stock."While we have been concerned about structural cost pressures in South Africa, operational challenges in most of Anglo's businesses, and the risk of further delays and capex overruns at the company's Minas Rio iron ore project, it is possible that the worst is now over for Anglo American, and we are becoming more positive on Anglo shares."Panmure Gordon has raised its rating for travel and leisure group TUI Travel from 'sell' to 'hold', saying that there are now few catalysts for the stock to underperform."The group is outperforming operationally, free cash flow generation is improving and with renewed effort from TUI AG to optimise the corporate structure of the two companies we see few catalysts for the stock to underperform."Citi Research has downgraded its ratings for mining peers Fresnillo, Randgold and Petropavlovsk as part of its review into the precious metals sector."We have for some time been expressing caution both about the future trend of precious metals prices and about the premium valuations on gold and silver stocks, but have been unwilling to downgrade them to 'sell' ratings prior to further evidence of a loss of momentum in gold and silver prices," the broker said on Friday morning."We now believe that we are seeing that loss of momentum and do not believe that the 'hothouse' valuation effect of UK buyers chasing limited top-quality UK gold and silver stocks will prevail for much longer."BC