The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday, March 8, edition that National Bank Financial analyst Maxim Sytchev has reaffirmed his "sector perform" recommendation for Aecon Group. The Globe's David Leeder writes in the Eye On Equities column that Mr. Sytchev's share target soared ahead by $4.50 to $15. Analysts on average target the shares at $16.94. While investors gave a resoundingly positive response to Aecon Group's fourth quarter 2023 earnings release on Wednesday, Mr. Sytchev remains "on the sidelines," seeing a better risk-adjusted reward elsewhere. Mr. Sytchev says in a note: "We were reluctant to imagine a more positive skew, but the shares moved faster than we believe fundamentals or more precisely probabilities suggest. We have three large projects (and one large arbitration) that need to be completed and while it's perfectly possible that none of them present any negative surprises, we are not willing to underwrite that possibility at the moment. Increased accounting complexity also makes the tractability of clean/economic interest performance more convoluted. When stripping out lease payments (and divestitures), FCF generation amounted to $19-million in 2023 (we feel zero attention is being ascribed to that)."