JPMorgan Boosts 3M to Overweight as Earnings Beat Expectations

3M (MMM) released its Q2 2026 earnings before the market opened on July 21, ahead of an investor conference call scheduled for 9:00 AM ET. The expected EPS was between $2.25 and $2.27 with revenue ranging from $6.38 billion to $6.41 billion. JPMorgan upgraded MMM from Neutral to Overweight last Friday, increasing its price target to $180.

The notable change in Q2 compared to Q1 is the deployment of 3M's Expanded Beam Optical technology by Microsoft in its Azure AI data centres. This marks the first time a named public customer has used this technology, and the addressable market for it increased from around $1 billion to more than $2 billion in just three months.

The backlog increase is significant, with Q1 growth exceeding 10% year-over-year and sequential growth also in double digits. Automotive backlog jumped about 20% year-over-year and approximately 35% sequentially.