Brean Murray Has $50 Target On HP (HPQ)

Brean Murray has a $50 price target on shares of Hewlett-Packard HPQ and a Buy rating, after the company agreed to purchase ArcSight ARST for $43.50 per share in cash yesterday. In the research note, Brean Murray writes, "We believe HP was attracted to ArcSight, given 1) increasing demand for compliance regulation, 2) its 40% revenue growth the past two quarters in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), and 3) double-digit operating margins." Brean Murray goes on to say, "HP expects the combination of HP and ArcSight to improve security, reduce risk and facilitate compliance at a lower cost for customers. The combined entity will be able to provide customers with 1) broader visibility to view all the events across the IT operations, security, and compliance, 2) deeper context to detect the threats and pattern-match to the correlating responses, and 3) a constant feedback loop between IT operations and security." Shares of HP closed at $38.28 yesterday.