UPDATE: Bank of America Downgrades Community Health Systems to Neutral

Bank of America has published a research report today on Community Health Systems

and has downgraded the company from Buy to Neutral. In the report, Bank of America writes, "We are downgrading CYH to Neutral and reducing our Price Objective to $20 from $29 as we see group multiples remaining depressed in 2012. Despite what we expect to be solid growth, the hospital group will continue to face a laundry list of government reimbursement headwinds in 2012. We remain comfortable with our CYH 2012 est and expect hospital numbers in general to move up but we believe that it will be difficult for hospital stocks to work in 2012 given the uncertain economic/political environment. Given its government investigation overhang, CYH will likely continue to trade at a discount (currently 0.3x), in our view. We see more upside at our top picks HCA (scale advantages) and HMA (acquisitions)." Bank of American has also lowered the price objective from $29 to $20 on Community Health Systems, which is currently trading down $0.40 from Friday's $17.45 closing price.