UPDATE: Barclays Capital Reiterates Equal Weight Rating, Raises PT on Mobile TeleSystems

In a report published Wednesday, Barclays Capital reiterated its Equal Weight rating on Mobile TeleSystems MBT, and slightly raised its price target from $18.00 to $18.20. Barclays noted, “Our global telecom analysis shows that CEEMEA outperformed global emerging market peers in 2Q12. MTS supported this theme, even if EBITDA beats were partly one-off in nature. Within CEEMEA we continue to prefer South Africa (specifically MTN) over Russia. We see a tougher earnings outlook for the latter, and risk of Rostelecom disrupting Moscow revenue share in 2013. For MTS specifically, its 2H12 investment in distribution will weigh on margins, but it does help safe-guard revenue share. We see revenue-share risk at VimpelCom (UW) as it focuses on cost control. We remain Equal Weight on MTS and nudge up our price target by 1% to $18.2 (due to Russia), implying no upside.” Mobile TeleSystems closed on Tuesday at $18.28.