UPDATE: Jefferies Initiates Coverage On EMC

Jefferies initiated coverage on EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) with a Buy rating and $37 price target in a report issued on Thursday.

Analysts led by James Kisner saw "EMC benefiting from the most complete storage platform and cloud offering. EMC has a solid SSD offering with XtremIO, a VMAX refresh underway in the high-end (launched in July), share gains in NAS due to Isilon, and DSSD could prove to be another home run."

The report noted that while "the company is exposed to some degree of share loss from emerging storage vendors, we believe the company’s broad portfolio combined with unparalleled "account control" should somewhat insulate EMC from these threats (particularly when compared to NTAP)."

The firm provided a 2015 EPS estimate 14 percent above consensus.

Supporting Kisner’s view was his argument "that IT and storage assets are aging and will ultimately require investment to build out the hybrid cloud."

The report's EPS estimates were $1.91 for 2014 and $2.46 for 2015. The P/E valuation was 15.1x for 2014 and 11.7x for 2015.

EMC Corporation recently traded at $28.20, down 0.67 percent.