UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Downgrades Yahoo! to Neutral

Piper Jaffray has published a research report on Yahoo!

and has downgraded the company from Overweight to Neutral after the announced sale of the company's Alibaba assets. In the report, Piper Jaffray writes, "The bottom line is that with Yahoo!'s now planned sale of its Alibaba assets, the biggest one year catalyst for shares has been removed. As a result, we are downgrading YHOO to Neutral from Overweight with the same $18 target. We believe the turnaround of the core company is likely to be a slow, multi-year process now that the company is again working with a new CEO. With the most important tranche of its Asian assets now spoken for, we believe investor attention must be shifted to the core of Yahoo!, which we believe remains challenged. Over the next 6-9 months we will be watching the new interim CEO. We would become more constructive once a new strategy is defined and tangibly implemented." Piper Jaffray maintains its $18 price target on Yahoo!, which is currently trading up $0.19 from Friday's $15.42 closing price.