CEO move bumps stock, not rating

Famous Dave's stock rallied last week on a surprise CEO change and the company's fourth-quarter results. The stock rose 15 percent on the day of announcement and 5 percent the day after.

Mark Smith, an analyst with Minneapolis-based Feltl, was "puzzled" by the management change. In a research note last week, he said: "With many unanswered questions regarding the [fourth-quarter] results and uncertainties in a management transition, we are maintaining our 'hold' rating."

Too soon to declare victory

Oakdale-based Imation is moving its business away from the declining sales in its legacy optical media storage devices to what it hopes will be a growing business in enterprise class or cloud-based data storage systems.

Analyst Eric Martinuzzi of investment bank Lake Street Capital Markets in Minneapolis has a "buy" rating on Imation. "It was nice to have some lumpy-to-the-good quarterly earnings call surprises for a change," Martinuzzi wrote. But, he said, "it is still too soon to declare victory on the war against secular declines in its legacy business."

Patrick Kennedy