Sterling investment bank has raised sfcom from hold to buy due to the recent jump in earnings beat analyst expectations...source:www.bloomberg.com

How can a stock be raised from hold to buy i.e how can you buy what you already hold?,
It makes more sense to talk of sell to hold or hold to sell

i also share the same sentiments... sector P/E is at 19 and earnings growth potential is good... let the sellers keep on selling....

In investment lingo

Buy - means buy more shares, price is undervalued and likely to go up soon
Hold - means keep your shares, price is at about correct value and likely to appreciate normally - it's a normal time.
Sell - sell your shares, shares are overvalued and likely to go down

So if a share is raised to buy from hold - it means something has happened that makes the share more valuable than it was before.

per my brokers' criteria a 'buy' means that the stock will rise more than 25%. A 'hold' means stock will return 0-25% while 'sell' is less than 0%. So hold to buy means that the stock will give a 'better than normal' return.