UPDATE: Lake Street Capital Markets Downgrades NetApp on Challenges/Opportunities Ahead

In a report published Thursday, Lake Street Capital Markets analyst Eric Martinuzzi downgraded NetApp NTAP from Buy to Hold, but reiterated the $43.00 price target.

In the report, Lake Street Capital Markets noted, “Standing on the NetApp investor front porch in August 2013 one can clearly see challenges, but also opportunities. The challenges are OEM, federal and Europe. Given the company's superior clustered storage technology and virtualization-friendly architecture, we see it as a market share gainer as pent up storage demand and state of the art data storage clustering drive better top line growth in coming quarters. However, the shares have appreciated to the point we need to gain a view into revenue upside or a valuation discount before going back to a BUY rating.”

NetApp closed on Wednesday at $42.33.