Monsanto Price Target Lowered In Front Of Earnings

In a research note out this morning, analyst Keith Carpenter of Canaccord Genuity lowered his price target of Monsanto Company

from $149 to $143 whie maintaining a Buy rating. In the note, Mr. Carpenter states; "Monsanto will release FQ2 earnings before market open on April 1. We continue to believe Monsanto is the best positioned of our large cap equities under coverage in the current commodity pricing environment. It is the only large cap company under our coverage list that not only offers substantial growth potential but offers farmers a better differentiated and value-added portfolio of products every year when compared to the previous year. We expect the company to be a relative and absolute outperformer." "As Monsanto is now partially through its fiscal Q3, we would expect it to narrow the range of its guidance from a $0.25 wide range to something smaller. Given our new estimate at $5.76 (versus its original guidance of $5.75-6.00), we would expect the company to offer a new guidance of $5.65-5.85, which is a mid-point guidance Canaccord continues to rate the shares of MON a Buy but have lowered our target price to US $143 (from US$149 previously) based upon a 21x multiple to our F16E EPS." Shares of MON closed at 112.89, implying 26.67 upside to the lowered price target of $143.