UPDATE: Piper Jaffray Upgrades Echelon to Overweight

Piper Jaffray raises its rating on Echelon ELON to Overweight from Neutral, and lifts its price target to $8 from $5 on the company's Brazilian opportunities. Piper Jaffray says, "We upgrade ELON to OW as our meetings with Brazilian partner ELO and Brazilian Electricity Regulator, ANEEL, leave us increasingly positive on ELON's opportunities there starting in 2013. ELO's 50% share of the Brazilian metering market along with its already approved smart meter, set the stage for it to be an early beneficiary of smart meter deployments expected to ramp in 2013. We estimate that if 100% of Brazil's 68m electrical meters are replaced with smart meters, and ELO can maintain its share, this could imply a $1.2b opportunity for ELON ($35 per meter)." ELON closed at $4.96 a share on Thursday.