UPDATE: Citigroup Reiterates Buy Rating, Raises PT on Marathon Oil Corporation on Coverage Transfer

In a report published Wednesday, Citigroup analyst Robert S. Morris reiterated a Buy rating on Marathon Oil Corporation

, and raised the price target from $33.00 to $40.00. In the report, Morris noted, “In June 2011, Marathon completed the spin-off of its downstream operations and became a pure E&P company. Thus, we are assuming coverage of MRO as part of our broader E&P universe. We are maintaining a Buy rating and increasing our target price to $40/share (from $33) based on MRO's stock achieving ‘normalized' 2013/2014 EV/DACF multiples of 6.1x/5.7x, 130% of proven-only NAV and ~87% of our updated risked resource sum-of-the-parts assessment.” Marathon Oil Corporation closed on Tuesday at $33.96.