Albert Fried Reiterates Overweight Rating, $13 PT on Pandora Media

In a report published Wednesday, Albert Fried & Company reiterated its Overweight rating and $13.00 price target on Pandora Media

. Albert Fried noted, “Pandora offers a great service and has a strong revenue growth potential. However, we think great Companies do not always offer attractive returns for equity investors. However, given the roughly 30% upside to our $13 Target we think Pandora is a great company and perhaps its shares are a good trade over the next 12 to 18 months...While social media generates a huge audience for FB, we note social monetization is largely a work in progress. In our view, Radio, and Internet Display (Pandora's revenue model) have an established pathway to monetization. We think Pandora is making strides in ad inventory management and sales distribution which will monetize Pandora's large audience. According to management, Pandora has 54.9 million active users, which grew 48% from 37.1 million from July 2011. Pandora is also establishing a media sales force and while staffing up could weigh on results in the near term, we think in the long term value derived from internally generated sales could drive Pandora's top line as compared to the only alternative; liquidating ad inventory on ad exchanges.” Pandora Media closed on Tuesday at $9.66.