Piper Jaffray Reiterates Overweight, $31 PT on Encore Capital

Piper Jaffray maintains its Overweight rating and $31 price target on Encore Capital ECPG on takeaways from a webinar and meeting with senor executives. Piper Jaffray notes increased purchases from competitors: "ECPG has recently increased purchasing paper from several smaller competitors. While the number of competitors or amount of paper purchased was not mentioned, we got the impression that margins on this business are very strong, and some of the best in the marketplace. We believe ECPG's strong analytics/underwriting at the individual consumer level lead it to find good deals in this area." ECPG closed at $20.66 per share on Wednesday.