Ameren (AEE) Stock Price Target Lifted at Barclays

Ameren’s (AEE) stock price target was raised to $55 from $52 at Barclays on Tuesday.
By Kaya Yurieff ,

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Ameren's (AEE) - Get Report stock price target was boosted to $55 from $52 at Barclays on Tuesday.

The firm has an "overweight" rating on shares of the St. Louis-based public utility holding company.

"We are raising our target $3 to $55 to reflect an increase in the Regulated Utility average '18 P/E to 17.5x from 16.5x," Barclays wrote in an analyst note.

On Friday, Ameren filed a Missouri rate case to address infrastructure investments, recovery of lost sales related to its historically largest customer Noranda Aluminum and regulatory lag, the firm noted. The company also issued an 8-K covering the major drivers.

"The requested increase is $206 million or 7.8% and the $7.2 billion of ratebase represents $0.2 billion above the previously allowed level for April 29, 2015. The test year is for the 12 months ended March 2016 with an anticipated true-up date of December 31, 2016," Barclays added.

As part of the filing, Ameren requested the amortization over 10 years of an estimated $81 million of lost fixed cost recovery due to lower sales volumes from Noranda between April 2015 and May 2017.

"We assume a -$0.15/share for lost sales related to Noranda in 2016 and no impact beginning in 2017. Also upcoming are filings due July 8 from stakeholders in the workshop regarding potential improvements to Missouri regulation," Barclays said.

Shares of Ameren closed higher by 0.02% to $53.76 on heavy trading volume Tuesday.

About 3.29 million of the company's shares changed hands today vs. its average 30-day volume of 1.87 million shares per day.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Buy" rating with a score of A+ on the stock.

The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its good cash flow from operations and solid stock price performance. 

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: AEE

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