UPDATE: Evercore Partners Upgrades Crown Castle to Overweight, Raises PT to $54

Evercore Partners upgrades Crown Castle CCI to Overweight from Equal-weight and raises its price target by $7 to $54 as recent stock underperformance may lead to attractive relative valuation. Evercore Partners says, "n March 2011, in the wake of the T/TMUS merger announcement, we downgraded CCI (and SBAC) and recommended tower investors focus on AMT (given AMT's broad international footprint and expected REIT conversion). Since that time, AMT outperformed CCI by 1,125bps. In July 2011, we upgraded SBAC based on a number of company specific factors – leaving CCI as our only EW in the group. Since our upgrade, SBAC has outperformed CCI by 1,150bps. We now view CCI as relatively undervalued – trading at a P/rFCF multiple of 12.3x 13E, vs. AMT at 16.2x and SBAC at 14.3x." CCI closed at $45.84 per share on Thursday.