Raymond James bets on Intuit in its 2014 best picks list

Silvia Ascarelli for MarketWatch.com writes:  Raymond James boasts that its list of top picks for a year tends to beat – no, cream — the market.

As it publishes its list for 2014 — 13 stocks this time — MarketWatch looks at how the rest of Wall Street judges its choices.

Perhaps not surprisingly, almost all get a thumbs up from most analysts who cover the stock, based on FactSet compilations. But there are some outliers.

The biggest is Intuit Inc. INTU , a $21.88 billion company known for its TurboTax tax-preparation software and its QuickBooks accounting program. Just 35% of analysts who cover it give the stock a buy or overweight rating, while 60% say hold and the final 5% say sell.

Raymond James analyst Wayne Johnson is focused on the rollout of a cloud-based QuickBooks platform called Harmony and the prospects for higher recurring revenue and margin expansion. While he notes Intuit  hasn’t met his (and the Street’s) expectations for the past two years, reduced expectations for TuboTax means the company should  at least meet expectations. He writes:

“All in, we believe Intuit could post high-single digit long-term growth, modest margin expansion, and low double-digit or better EPS growth driven in part by solid subscriber growth in the QuickBooks ecosystem.”