UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Downgrades VeriFone to Neutral on Near-Term Visibility

Piper Jaffray downgraded VeriFone (NYSE:

) from Overweight to Neutral and lowered the price target from $42.00 to $24.00. Piper Jaffray noted, "After the close (2/20/13), PAY pre-announced a significant miss for the January quarter. It expects January quarter non-GAAP revenue of $425-430M vs. PJC/consensus at $491M/$494M, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.47-0.50 vs. PJC/consensus at $0.71/0.73. PAY highlighted a litany of reasons for the miss, including weak conditions in Europe, revenue recognition issues in the Middle East/Africa, lower revenue from Brazilian customers, political uncertainty in Venezuela and various delays at several customers. Due to the magnitude of these issues, and clear lack of near-term visibility, we are downgrading shares of PAY to Neutral from Overweight and reducing our price target to $24 from $42." VeriFone closed at $31.89 on Wednesday.