Increased dividend to $0.15 from $0.12 for shareholders of record on November 27.

Buy - Price 23.92 on Sept. 9
by Sandler O'Neill

Upgrading to Buy, from Hold. We may have missed the first leg up for EVR shares, but we feel better about the firm's outlook, given its recent hiring of CEO Ralph Schlosstein coupled with an improving cyclical outlook for [mergers and acquisitions]. While we do not expect the stock to move straight up, we believe the shares will move toward the mid-$30s range as investors and analysts increasingly begin to think about the potential for 2011 earnings, which we expect will be north of $2. Using this $2 estimate, which we believe to be a good base level of a normalized EPS estimate at this time, and applying the firm's average forward multiple of approximately 16 times, our target is now 32. Market cap: $854 million.

Bank on these Financial stocks: Kristin Bentz, The Talented Blonde and Senior Reporter Dan Freed handicap the Financials ahead of earnings this week.


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high potential