UPDATE: PiperJaffray Reiterates Neutral Rating, Lowers PT on Valassis Communications

In a company note released earlier today, PiperJaffray reiterated its Neutral rating on Valassis Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VCI) but lowered its price target from $24.00 to $22.00.

PiperJaffray went on to say “It's hard to ignore secular headwinds facing VCI. While sluggish CPG spending was mentioned as the culprit impacting all segments outside shared mail, we cannot ignore the fact that CPG spend has shown sequential improvement in other print categories (i.e. magazine) more recently. We also cannot ignore the fact that CPG ad spend has picked up in scalable digital categories such as online/mobile recipes. In shared mail, whether secular or not, the downward trending wrapped sell-through the last few years points to a product segment losing a competitive edge.”

Valassis Communications, Inc. closed at $18.91.