Five stocks to buy ahead of earnings include one particular tech giant, Bank of America says

Bank of America highlighted several pre-earnings buys, including Apple, Quanta Services, Kodiak Gas Services, TripAdvisor and Casey's General Stores, with the clearest upside cases tied to stronger fundamentals and favorable catalysts. Kodiak's 12-month price target was raised to $70 from $45 on tailwinds from LNG infrastructure and AI data center power demand, while TripAdvisor was upgraded to buy on Starboard's 9% stake and segment growth in Viator and TheFork. Quanta was cited as a leading utility-services provider, and Apple was favored for an expected iPhone upgrade cycle and expanding Services margins.

Analysis

The common thread is not “earnings strength” so much as balance-sheet-light, capacity-constrained businesses with visible demand and pricing leverage. That favors the market’s current obsession with quality growth over cyclical beta: PWR and KGS sit in the path of multi-year capex cycles, while AAPL’s upgrade cycle is really a hardware gatekeeper trade on AI monetization, and CASY is a quieter compounding story where local execution beats broad retail traffic. The second-order implication is that peers with more exposed commodity or discretionary demand should feel pressure as capital rotates toward names with identifiable self-help and less earnings volatility.

PWR looks best positioned to keep outperforming on a 6-12 month horizon because utility customers are effectively outsourcing complexity, not just buying labor. That tends to sustain above-average margins even if headline project growth moderates, and it makes smaller regional service firms vulnerable to losing wallet share or being forced into lower-margin subcontracting. KGS is more levered to infrastructure scarcity: if AI power demand and LNG buildout remain firm, compression/power assets become the bottleneck, which supports pricing and utilization; the risk is that the market is extrapolating acquisition synergies faster than they can actually be realized.

TRIP is the most interesting contrarian setup. Activism can unlock value, but the market may be underestimating how much of the upside is already embedded in the “asset separation” narrative; if the faster-growing units are already the only thing people care about, a breakup or monetization can become a settlement trade rather than a rerating catalyst. Meanwhile, AAPL is a cleaner sentiment vehicle than a near-term earnings torque play: the AI upgrade cycle is likely a 12-24 month story, but the near-term risk is that software features lag hardware adoption, compressing the multiple before monetization becomes visible.

CASY is the least flashy but most defensible if consumer spending softens, because its mix supports resilience even if fuel volumes wobble. The market is paying for consistency, and that premium can persist as long as foodservice mix and operating discipline keep offsetting traffic normalization. The key contrarian risk across the group is that investors may be overpaying for durability just as earnings revisions peak, which would favor trimming after earnings if guidance is merely “good, not better.”

Key Decisions for Investors

• Go long PWR into earnings / investor-day follow-through, with a 3-6 month hold: best risk/reward is continuation of multiple expansion if margin commentary confirms wallet-share gains; cut if backlog quality or labor availability starts to constrain execution.
• Stay long KGS but hedge with a short in a more rate-sensitive midstream/service proxy if you need to isolate the AI/LNG power scarcity trade; hold 3-9 months, since the market is likely to reward any evidence that DPS is accretive to utilization and pricing.
• Use AAPL as a call spread expression rather than outright common: buy 6-12 month upside exposure around the next product cycle, but finance it by selling near-dated strength into earnings if the print lacks evidence of immediate AI monetization.
• Trade TRIP as an activism optionality name, not a core fundamental long: buy on post-earnings weakness only if the market sells off the non-core assets too aggressively; otherwise consider a tighter-risk pair long TRIP / short a lower-quality online travel peer.
• Treat CASY as a defensive long only on pullbacks; upside is steadier than explosive, so the better setup is after any guidance-related selloff, with a 6-12 month horizon and a stop if foodservice margins decelerate materially.