Citi Upgrades Eaton Vance

Citi upgraded Eaton Vance Corp (NYSE: EV) from Sell to Neutral and set a $38 price target on Friday.

According analyst William R. Katz, the upgrade was made “given the nearly 15 percent decline since the ETMF/NextShares announcement,” and he viewed “the risk/reward as balanced.” Katz also believed “the stock price has seemingly come full circle as the P/E multiple has declined from 18x 2015 to 16x."

Additionally, “following 1/15 news around American Beacon becoming the first firm to sign an agreement, we believe a pickup in partnership announcements could boost the shares.”

In terms of downside risks, Katz noted that “with shares now trading in line with our target, we believe the potential downside totals $3 per share should the [NextShares] initiative turn out to produce no value.”

On the upside, Katz believed “a faster turn in the core business (particularly LT flows) and/or a faster adoption of NextShares could make the shares outperform our target price.”

The firm increased its F2017 Adjusted EPS estimate to $2.93, and increase of $0.04 to “reflect model fine tuning.”

Eaton Vance recently traded at $38.51, down 1.21 percent.