Piper Jaffray Neutral On Apogee Enterprises

Piper Jaffray has a Neutral rating and a $14 price target Apogee Enterprises, Inc. APOG. In a note to clients, Piper Jaffray writes, "Apogee's 1QFY12 results were slightly above our expectations as revenue was up 7.2% y/y, while gross margin remained constrained at 15.4%. Architectural backlog continued sequential improvement: up 4% sequentially and 15% y/y to $247M. EPS of ($0.08) beat PJC's estimate of ($0.09) and consensus of ($0.11) driven by revenue ($153.3M vs. PJC $147.6M), and favorable SG&A leverage (17.7% versus 18.1%). The company now expects y/y revenue growth to be 10% with slight profitability. We remain Neutral and continue to see a more significant recovery in FY13. We will be evaluating our estimates and price target following Apogee's earnings call at 7:30 AM CT today (Wednesday)." Shares of APOG gained 26 cents yesterday to close at $12.55, a gain of 2.1%.