Morgan Stanley Overweight On Lorillard (LO)

Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating and a $102 price target on shares of Lorillard LO. In a note to clients, Morgan Stanley writes, "Lorillard is in a position of competitive strength, and we see no obvious reason –absent onerous FDA menthol regulation – why its history of outperformance cannot persist. Newport's strong brand equity and its attractive demographics should result in continued share growth for the foreseeable future. Consequently, we believe that there is likely conceptually relatively greater risk – than opportunity –with very significant change in strategic or operational direction. Simply put, Lorillard would be tremendously successful, in our view, if it can “simply” maintain its historic degree of relative operating outperformance." Shares of LO are down 98 cents in Friday trading to $99.40, a loss of nearly 1% on 325,000 shares so far.