UPDATE: JMP Securities Reiterates Market Outperform Rating, Lowers PT on Alliance Data Systems Corporation on Reduced 2015E EPS

In a report published Monday, JMP Securities analyst David M. Scharf reiterated a Market Outperform rating on Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE: ADS), but lowered the price target from $310.00 to $300.00.In the report, JMP Securities noted, “We maintain our Market Outperform rating, but reduce our 2015E EPS to account for higher private label provisioning expense. Based on our latest conversions with the company, we raise our outlook for year-end 2014 and 2015 private label receivables, but the near-term impact is to reduce our 2015 EPS forecast due to upfront provisioning in advance of future revenue growth. While this is not the first time we expect a ‘timing hit' to earnings, we anticipate that guidance for 2015 core EPS in late October will be in the ‘low $14.00s,' compared to a current Street average of $14.63. We continue to recommend the shares based on record new business pipelines at private label and Epsilon, growing wallet share for private label purchases, stable credit, new runways in Europe (Brand Loyalty) and Brazil (Dotz), and share repurchases. Our revised $300 target price (from $310) is based on the current forward P/E of 21x applied to our 2015 estimate (vs. 20.5x P/E prior).”Alliance Data Systems Corporation closed on Friday at $261.97.