Fusion-IO Zooms 16% As Stifel Starts At Buy, $27 Target

Shares of data storage equipment vendor Fusion-IO (FIO) are up $2.40, or almost 16%, at $17.51 after Stifel Nicolaus’s Aaron Rakers slapped a Buy rating on the stock and a $27 price target today in taking up coverage of the firm.�

Fusion-IO’s software focus should keep it in the lead technologically in the�”PCI-express” flavor of solid state drives, he argues, and the general �”validation” of its wares will only increase as the company expands beyond its early marquee customers, Facebook and Apple (AAPL), he writes. �

Rakers’s estimates for this year are slightly above consensus as far as the evenue component. For the fiscal year 2012 ending next June, he is modeling $292 million in revenue and 16 cents per share, versus the average Street estimate of �$289.7 million and 17 cents per share.�

For fiscal 2013, the gap is greater: he’s modeling $421 million and 40 cents per share versus the consensus $407 million and 33 cents.

Rakers values FIO using a combination of metrics, including a 30 times multiple of his calendar 2013 EPS estimate of 52 cents, and four times Enterprise Value as a multiple of Ebitda.�

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