Juniper: Stifel Upgrades To Buy

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Sanjiv Wadhwani this morning upped his rating on Juniper Networks (JNPR) to Buy from Hold, setting a price target of $31. The stock closed Friday at $25.51.

The analyst writes that he came away from the company’s recent analyst meeting less concerned about market share losses to Cisco (CSCO), noting that the new Cisco ASR edge router “has gained limited traction over the past 6 months,” and asserting that Juniper’s own MX-3D products “have leapfrogged the ASP in scale and bandwidth capabilities.” He says checs find pent-up demand for MX-3D, “particularly at AT&T.”

Wadhwani adds that the company’s decision to offer licenses to its Junos networking operating system software “could be a wildcard” for revenue and profits. “Our checks show that it is possible a large IT vendors such as Dell could license Junos,” he writes.

JNPR today is up 35 cents, or 1.4%, to $25.86.