Morgan Stanley Maintains Underweight Rating on Heartland Express

A report from Morgan Stanley reiterates its Underweight rating on Heartland Express HTLD. The report states, “We believe the share price will rise in absolute terms over the next 60 days. We believe consensus, both through its rating skew and EPS revisions, has overshot on the bearish side on HTLD more than any other truck carrier we cover such that HTLD is within ~6% of 52 week lows – an outlier within the group. On the other hand, WERN is one of the best performing TL carriers (it's up YTD) and has benefitted from few negative EPS revisions of late despite deteriorating TL trends and we currently see downside to consensus EPS.” HTLD closed Friday at $13.62.