Piper Jaffray Lowers PT On PNR To $47

Piper Jaffray has lowered its price target on Pentair Inc. PNR from $48 to $47 and is maintaining an Overweight rating on the stock in light of a strong 1Q. In the report, Piper Jaffray writes, “We maintain our Overweight rating on shares of PNR and are taking up our estimates to reflect a solid 1Q that saw $0.52 in EPS (vs our estimate of $0.45) on revenues of $790 million ($30 million above our estimate). Management was very upbeat on the call about the potential for growth embedded in the acquisition of Clean Process Technologies (CPT) in the latter half of the year as well as the potential for sustained margin expansion. We are taking our EPS estimates for 2011 up by $0.09 to $2.44 (net of acquisition costs) and for 2012 up by $0.15 to $2.96. Our price target goes to $47.” PNR closed yesterday at $39.67.