Thursday, July 15, 2010

Lighting (and more): Veeco: Piper Downgrades, Slashes Price Target; Shrs Trade Off (VECO)

The stock is down 7% at $38.29.
Oddly enough the price is still higher than the $36.11 at the time of our June 10 post "Lighting: Veeco Instruments Catches a Reiterated Buy Rating from Citi (VECO)"

From Tech Trader Daily:
Veeco Instruments (VECO) shares are trading lower this morning after Piper Jaffray analyst Ahmar Zaman took over coverage of the LED lighting companies for the firm, reducing Piper’s rating on VECO to Neutral from Overweight. He also chopped Piper’s target for the stock to $69, from $44.

Zaman writes that checks find bookings for LED manufacturing equipment likely peaked in Q2; he contends a significant percentage of orders from its biggest customers are likely already in backlog. He sees a risk of bookings declining sequentially in the second half. He says that the stock looks cheap at 10x forward earnings, but that “uncertainties around order momentum in the second half … move us to the sidelines at this time.”...MORE