UPDATE: Morgan Stanley Initiates Coverage on Splunk

According to a research report published this morning, Morgan Stanley has initiated Splunk SPLK with an Equal-weight rating. In the report, Morgan Stanley commented, "SPLK represents a scarce pure-play on “Big Data” and one with the potential to become ‘the' platform for deriving value from machine data. At 15x CY13e revenues, however, the stock prices in several years of strong execution with risk-reward balanced at current levels and we initiate at Equal-weight." Splunk closed Friday at $31.36.