UPDATE: Oppenheimer Downgrades ESCO Technologies to Perform on Impaired Visibility

In a report published Thursday, Oppenheimer analyst Jim Giannakouros downgraded the rating on ESCO Technologies

from Outperform to Perform. In the report, Giannakouros noted, “We are downgrading ESE shares to Perform from Outperform as we no longer view the company a relative standout from a revenue visibility perspective. While guidance will be updated on its F2Q call in a few weeks, we believe its FY13 revenues will fall short of previous plan by $40-50M, and have lowered our estimates accordingly. Specifically, project delays in the US water market and lower COOP deliveries lower ESE's near-term outlook, and were two markets we thought were relatively stable. ESE announced restructuring actions to optimize Aclara's NA manufacturing cost structure and improve Doble's profitability in Europe, which should drive OM improvement in '14 even if revenue growth is slow to resume.” ESCO Technologies closed on Wednesday at $37.54.