UPDATE: Sterne Agee Raises PT on VMware to $115, Reiterates Buy

Sterne Agee raises its price target to $115 from $108 on VMware

as it reiterates its Buy rating on the company given strength on management automation and related attach rates in the fourth quarter. Sterne Agee says, "Clearly VMware management was positive regarding contribution of management tools to total bookings in 4Q, at north of 10% (such as vCloud Director, SRM and vCenter Ops). We believe the bears on VMW underestimate the company's footprint inside customers' data centers as a platform for new product growth as well as the emerging theme of system management “consolidation,” i.e. lifting Storage, Networking and Security functions into a single data center OS (ie vSphere). We see VMware as uniquely positioned to execute on this front, while also benefitting from organic workload growth (which helps drive core business)." VMW closed at $86 a share yesterday.