Brean Murray Reiterating $60 Target On Hewlett Packard Despite Hurd's Resignation (HPQ)

Brean Murray Carret & Co. is out defending shares of Hewlett Packard HPQ after CEO Mark Hurd resigned Friday afternoon amid a sexual harassment charge. It has a Buy rating and $60 price target on shares of the Silicon Valley company. In the report Brean Murrary writes, " While we’d expect the news to be viewed negatively in the near term given Mr. Hurd has been the orchestrator of HP’s turnaround, we believe near-term fundamentals should remain unaffected. We believe the real re-assessment of HP will come upon appointment of either the new permanent CEO, or upon the decision on a longer-term business strategy should it differ from Mr. Hurd’s quite successful strategy of growth + cost management. Our $60 target price is 11x - 12x our CY11 EPS forecast of $5.05." Shares of Hewlett Packard are higher in pre-market trading to $42.79, after having gotten hit hard after the bell on Friday.