UPDATE: Stifel Nicolaus Raises PT to $56 on Jacobs Engineering Group on Bookings and Pricing Improvement

Stifel Nicolaus reiterated its Buy rating on Jacobs Engineering Group JEC and raised the price target from $52.00 to $56.00. Stifel Nicolaus commented, "JEC's bookings of $3.04B produced a quarterly book-to-bill rate of 1.10x, keeping the book-to-bill above the critical 1.00x level for 8 quarters running. Pricing continued to improve in the quarter, particularly within the company's process markets and the company is seeing engineering capacity tightening with craft labor next. … Management maintained FY2013 EPS guidance of $3.00-$3.50 and our estimate now stands at $3.42 vs. $3.40, previously on revenues of $12.1B, +11% y/y. For FY2014 our estimate remains unchanged at $3.82 on revenues of $14.1B, +16% y/y. We continue to rate JEC shares Buy with a price target of $56/sh." Jacobs Engineering Group closed at $47.03 on Thursday.