UPDATE: Brean Murray Carret Downgrades Alpha Natural Resources to Hold on High Coal Leverage

Brean Murray Carret reduced its rating on Alpha Natural Resources

from Buy to Hold and reduced its price target from $15 to $8. Brean Murray Carret commented, "Given our updated met coal outlook, we are revising our rating on Alpha Natural Resources to a Hold from a Buy previously. We now have a fair value estimate of $8 for Alpha, replacing the company's former target price of $15. The primary reason for this remains the company's high leverage to met coal pricing, so that our lower price deck exacted a large toll on our estimated 2013 margins for Alpha. Unfortunately, the earnings contribution from the PRB and NAPP is not significant enough to absorb the impact of our lower met coal price estimates in the near‐term. We estimate that the company's Central Appalachian thermal operations require $4/mcf natural gas prices to break even on fully loaded costs." Alpha Natural Resources closed at $6.90 on Wednesday.