UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Raises PT to $24 on NuVasive; Q4 Sets Stage for Outperformance

Piper Jaffray maintained NuVasive

with an Overweight rating and raised the price target from $23.00 to $24.00. Piper Jaffray noted, "Management delivered surprising upside on a nice bounce-back in revenues in 4Q12. However, the challenge for NuVasive going forward will be to string together 3-4 quarters of meeting or beating estimates and to drive growth into the double-digit range that management has framed out for investors as an aspirational long-term objective, which, based on management's comments, will require continued cooperation from the spine market in terms of further improvements in growth. … We do in fact expect continued improvements in spine market growth in 2013 and we remain buyers of NUVA at current levels." NuVasive closed at $18.42 on Tuesday.