Selected Stock Price Target News — July 15, 2026

Piper Sandler’s Paul Newsome made two big calls on Wednesday. He upgraded Arthur J. Gallagher ($AJG) to Overweight. He raised his target to $276. He also downgraded Aon ($AON) to Neutral. But he raised that target too, to $377 from $355. Meanwhile, UBS‘s Brian Meredith made a similar move on Allstate ($ALL). He cut his rating to Neutral from Buy. But he raised his price target too, to $261 from $255.

Steady Organic Growth Guidance Drives Piper Sandler’s Upgrade On Arthur J. Gallagher

Gallagher doesn’t underwrite insurance. It’s a broker, not the insurer. The company connects businesses to insurers for commercial coverage and employee benefits. Then it earns a fee or commission on the placement. It never carries the underwriting risk. That model had a strong first quarter. Revenue hit $4.76 billion, up 27.9% from a year earlier. Net earnings reached $823 million. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $4.47, above the $4.43 Wall Street expected.

Gallagher reaffirmed its 2026 growth target this month. The goal is about 6% organic growth. That splits into 1.5 points of rate, 2.5 points of new business, and 1.5 points of exposure growth. Property renewals are down about 7% right now, but casualty pricing is up about 5%. Management says the second quarter will feel the property drag the most. Gallagher’s AssuredPartners acquisition, still being folded in, accounts for most of the quarter’s revenue jump.

A Different Kind Of Business

Piper Sandler‘s Newsome had rated the stock Neutral since early January. On Wednesday he moved it to Overweight, raising his target to $276 from $225, a $51 jump. He’s the last of the group to move. Others have been raising for weeks. RBC Capital‘s Rowland Mayor lifted his target to $300 on July 13, keeping an Outperform rating. Wells Fargo‘s Elyse Greenspan raised hers to $299 on July 9. Mizuho‘s Yaron Kinar pushed his to $287 that same day. Cantor Fitzgerald‘s Ryan Tunis moved his number to $300 too, though he kept a Neutral rating. AnaChart’s board of 13 analysts on Gallagher averages $271.93. The high is $334, the low $211. Newsome’s own career record stands at 72.66% met, covering 785 price targets on 35 stocks.

Retail commercial insurance and employee benefits work make up most of Gallagher’s business. That’s the side of the market where casualty rates are still rising. Reinsurance placement is different, and it’s the side getting squeezed by this month’s rate cuts. Tunis hasn’t moved off Neutral. He’s matching RBC’s $300 target anyway, the only analyst pairing that number with a hold rating. Gallagher reports second-quarter results July 30, one day after Aon’s own print. Watch the casualty rate gains: they need to stay close to that 6% goal.

Softening Reinsurance Renewals Push Piper Sandler To The Sidelines On Aon

Aon runs on the same model. It’s a broker too. It earns fees arranging insurance and reinsurance placements, and advising on employee health and retirement plans. It doesn’t carry underwriting risk on its own books. First-quarter numbers were strong. Revenue rose 6% to $5.0 billion. Net income climbed to $1.2 billion, or $5.63 per diluted share, up from $965 million a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share rose 14% to $6.48.

Aon published its own renewal report two weeks ago. It showed a clear trend: property catastrophe reinsurance prices fell by double digits at the June and July renewal dates. Global reinsurance capital hit a record $790 billion as of March 31. That gives buyers more leverage and more room for custom deal structures. It’s the exact business Aon’s reinsurance unit sells into.

A Narrower Problem

Aon’s own first-quarter growth ran 5% organic, close to the prior quarter’s pace, but that number blends two different businesses. Reinsurance advisory and retail brokerage aren’t feeling the same market right now. Newsome moved to Neutral from Overweight on Wednesday and lifted his price target to $377 from $355 in the same note.

He’s cutting against a wave of raises. Greenspan lifted her target to $406 on July 9. Tunis pushed his to $445 that same day, the Street high. Kinar raised his to $426 the same day too. He’s hit that number 73.33% of the time on this stock across 15 prior tries. Meredith has held Aon at a Hold rating since May 2017, at $383 as of July 8. That’s a 71.43% record predating this week’s split by years. AnaChart’s board of 14 analysts on Aon averages $406.31. Cantor’s $445 is the high, Newsome’s own $355, before Wednesday, the low.

A Separate Business Line

The reinsurance pressure is a narrow problem. Aon’s brokerage and consulting business is different: it collects fees on placements and never touches the catastrophe layer. Wells Fargo, Cantor, and Mizuho have all raised their targets since July 8 without touching their ratings. Meredith’s UBS has sat at Hold since 2017, long before this week’s split. Newsome himself held Aon at Overweight all spring. He trimmed his target from $388 to $355 in April, nudged it back up to $360, then down again to $355 through May. Wednesday broke that pattern: he moved to Neutral and raised his target to $377. Aon’s second-quarter print lands July 29, the first real checkpoint. It will show whether the reinsurance headwind shows up in the actual numbers or stays contained to the renewal season.

A Margin Normalization Call Sends UBS To The Sidelines On Allstate

Allstate works differently from Gallagher and Aon. It underwrites and sells its own auto and home insurance directly to consumers. It collects premiums and pays claims from its own balance sheet. Catastrophe losses hit its results directly. A broker like Gallagher or Aon only feels that kind of pressure indirectly, through reinsurance placement volume. The first quarter showed both sides of that risk. Total revenue was $16.9 billion. Net income jumped to $2.46 billion, or $9.25 per diluted share, more than triple the year-ago total. Its property-liability underwriting income alone came in at $2,659 million, versus just $364 million a year earlier.

Allstate’s homeowners book turned a profit in the first quarter, $685 million, versus a $451 million loss a year earlier. That came even after big storm losses. Pretax catastrophe losses hit $1.24 billion, covering 15 wind and hail events in March alone. The company has been giving some of that back, though. Average auto and home premiums fell 17% this year, covering roughly 7.8 million policyholders. Allstate rolled out tailored rate reviews to make it happen.

Two Sides Of The Bet

Meredith moved to Neutral from Buy on Wednesday, lifting his own target to $261 from $255 in the same note. He isn’t the first to get cautious. Barclays‘s Alex Scott has held the lone Sell rating on Allstate since January 2025, at $213, the lowest on the Street. He’s been right 82.35% of the time across 17 prior calls.

Stifel‘s Meyer Shields moved to Hold a day earlier, on July 8, at $255. Raymond James‘s Gregory Peters set the Street-high target on July 6, at $300, keeping a Strong Buy. Evercore‘s Oliver Wintermantel rates Allstate at Buy too, and he’s hit 80% of his last five calls. AnaChart’s 16-analyst board on Allstate averages $246.28, a range that runs from Scott’s $213 low to Peters’s $300 high.

Where The Board Splits

Scott’s Sell has sat below the board for two and a half years. It’s a standing view that Allstate’s underwriting margins won’t hold at current levels. Meredith’s new Neutral moves in the same direction without going as far as Scott’s Sell. Peters and Wintermantel are staying bullish for a different reason: Allstate’s policy count keeps growing. Both auto and home policies in force are up 2.5% in the year through April, even as the company cut prices. Shields made the same call a week before Meredith did, moving to Hold but stopping short of a Sell.

The next data point lands August 5, when Allstate reports second-quarter results. The earnings call follows the next day. The test is simple. Does the margin Scott and Meredith are betting against hold up? Or does the stronger quarter Peters and Wintermantel expect show up instead?

Ten desks had a hand in today’s numbers: Piper Sandler, Wells Fargo, RBC Capital, Cantor Fitzgerald, Mizuho, UBS, Evercore, Raymond James, Barclays, and Stifel. That’s a lot of eyes on three insurance names in one morning. AnaChart tracks 661,383 price targets and 759,654 ratings. That data comes from 7,191 analysts, split between 3,754 active and 3,437 retired. It spans 9,686 tickers and 424 brokers, going back 18 years to 2008. The full analyst price target dataset is available at anachart.store. Check a call before it’s made.