Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day Highlights: Manulife Financial, China Petroleum & Chemical, Verizon Communications, Vodafone

Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day Highlights: Manulife Financial, China Petroleum
       & Chemical, Verizon Communications, Vodafone Group plc and AT&T

PR Newswire

CHICAGO, May 8, 2012

CHICAGO, May 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Zacks Equity Research highlights:
Manulife Financial Corp. (NYSE: MFC) as the Bull of the Day and China
Petroleum & Chemical (NYSE: SNP) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks
Equity Research provides analysis on Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ),
Vodafone Group plc. (Nasdaq: VOD) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T).

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101027/ZIRLOGO)

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at
http://at.zacks.com/?id=2678.

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

We are upgrading our recommendation on the shares of Manulife Financial
Corp. (NYSE: MFC) following strong first-quarter results. The company reported
operating earnings of $1.13 billion, higher than $871 million in the
prior-year quarter. Manulife has achieved a great deal in reducing potential
equity markets and interest rates risk exposures, along with minimizing
existing risks.

We also remain impressed with the company's significant progress made in
diversifying its businesses, achieving growth in targeted areas and
cultivating new revenue streams. Our six-month target price of $16.00 equates
to about 50.0x our earnings estimate for 2012.

We view the $0.52 per common share annual dividend as secure, implying an
expected total return of about 24% over the next six months. This is
consistent with our Outperform recommendation on the shares.

Bear of the Day:

We are maintaining our Underperform recommendation on Sinopec - ADS, aka China
Petroleum & Chemical (NYSE: SNP) following its first quarter 2012 results. The
company's quarterly profit registered a 35.2% decline, owing to slower
domestic economic growth.

Moreover, increases in the price of international crude oil amidst government
caps on fuel prices, prevented the company from fully passing on spiraling
costs to consumers, thereby hurting refining margins.

The company's weak guidance for this year also leads us to recommend caution.
We believe that Sinopec's matured domestic oil fields and associated rising
costs will continue to be an overhang on its operations as natural declines
become pricier to counterbalance. Other risk factors, such as technological
failure and geo-political disturbance, also add to our negative sentiment.

Latest Posts on the Zacks Analyst Blog:

LTE Thriving in North America

The recent data on LTE subscriptions in the U.S. and Canada proves that with
the increasing adaption of LTE 4G technologies, the mobile industry in North
America is about to enter into a new era. The data as published by 4G
Americas indicates that the U.S. and Canada has almost two-thirds of the
world's LTE subscriptions.

As per the data provided by Informa Telecoms and Media, North America had 10.8
million LTE subscribers in the month of March. Among them, 10.5 million
subscribers were from the U.S. and the remaining 300,000 were from Canada.
There are eight carriers in the U.S and three in Canada that provide
Commercial LTE services.

The increasing demand of LTE services is due to its advantages over other 4G
technologies like WiMAX, Ultra mobile Broadband and Multi-input Multi-output
(MIMO) wireless LAN. LTE offers advantages like spectral efficiencies, lower
costs and superior integration ability with other open wireless standards.

LTE provides upload and download rates of 100Mbit/s and 50Mbit/s respectively
with RAN (radio access network) round-trip times of less than 10ms. Ability to
expand capacity and increase speed are the prime reasons for its wide
acceptability within the wireless segment.

According to Juniper research, subscriber base could reach 428 million in the
next five years due to rapid uptake of LTE mobile broadband technology.
Initially they expect LTE adaptation to be dominated by enterprise subscribers
but also believe that retail consumer will overtake them by 2015. We believe
that LTE service will attract enterprise customers due to its improved data
speeds and service guarantee offerings, and improve consumer demand with the
emergence of LTE enabled devices.

To support the growing demand of LTE services, telecom carriers like Verizon
Wireless, which is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:
VZ) and Vodafone Group plc. (Nasdaq: VOD), have expanded their reach across
230 markets in the U.S. and have vowed to expand their reach to 400 markets by
the end of the year.

Verizon is ahead of its rival AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), which has an LTE presence
in 30 U.S. markets, but the latter has also started to ramp up its network
coverage. This implies that going forward, LTE possesses the biggest
opportunities for carriers. 

Get the full analysis of all these stocks by going to
http://at.zacks.com/?id=2649.

About the Bull and Bear of the Day

Every day, the analysts at Zacks Equity Research select two stocks that are
likely to outperform (Bull) or underperform (Bear) the markets over the next
3-6 months.

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