TheStreet Ratings Top 10 Rating Changes

NEW YORK (TheStreet Ratings) -- Every trading day TheStreet Ratings' stock model reviews the investment ratings on around 4,700 U.S. traded stocks for potential upgrades or downgrades based on the latest available financial results and trading activity.

TheStreet Ratings released rating changes on 123 U.S. common stocks for week ending May 4, 2012. 52 stocks were upgraded and 71 stocks were downgraded by our stock model.

Rating Change #10

Eldorado Gold Corp (EGO) has been downgraded by TheStreet Ratings from buy to hold. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and expanding profit margins. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself, disappointing return on equity and weak operating cash flow.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

• The revenue growth came in higher than the industry average of 2.0%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues rose by 23.9%. This growth in revenue appears to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, improving the earnings per share.
• EGO's debt-to-equity ratio is very low at 0.01 and is currently below that of the industry average, implying that there has been very successful management of debt levels.
• EGO has underperformed the S&P 500 Index, declining 21.88% from its price level of one year ago. Looking ahead, we do not see anything in this company's numbers that would change the one-year trend. It was down over the last twelve months; and it could be down again in the next twelve. Naturally, a bull or bear market could sway the movement of this stock.
• The company's current return on equity has slightly decreased from the same quarter one year prior. This implies a minor weakness in the organization. When compared to other companies in the Metals & Mining industry and the overall market, ELDORADO GOLD CORP's return on equity is below that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.