Jim: All I can say about Carpenter's current explanation for his rating change is that it appears to be be based more on a short term trading mentality than on a valuation basis. All of the factors used to justify his $39 price target for this year ($45 for 2010) are still in play and could still result in some nice appreciation.
According to Yahoo, the last previous downgrade by Hilliard Lyons from a Buy to a Neutral rating was on 10 Jul 2008, after Staff no violation comment and after the price dropped from the mid 20's to the 18 range. It then almost immediately rose back to the mid 20's. So I would say his attempt to time the market was little off.
"We rate the shares a Buy with a $39 price target. We are positive on InterDigital’s ability to sign 3G licensing agreements with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola (if it remains a viable handset manufacturer). We believe InterDigital’s case against Nokia at the ITC, with its evidentiary hearing and infringement ruling dates provide the parties a time frame to settle. Given Nokia’s past with InterDigital (stall and delay through any and all legal means in any jurisdiction or country – approximately 10 court cased filed by Nokia since 2003), we believe it is possible that Nokia attempts another Hail Mary pass or two to delay the proceedings, but we do not expect them to be successful. 3G agreements with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola could add hundreds of millions of dollars of licensing revenue to InterDigital over a five year period, and this leads us to project InterDigital’s earnings power at over $3.00 per share if it signs Nokia and Sony Ericsson, and the licensing terms are structured as fixed payment/ratable deals. We derive our $39 price target by applying a 14x multiple to our 2010 EPS estimate of $3.22, which yields $45. Then, we discount the $45 back one year to account for using a 2010 EPS estimate, which entails dividing $45 by our estimate of InterDigital’s cost of capital (we use 15%). This yields a $39 one year price target. The target multiple compares to 13x for the NASDAQ Composite. We believe a premium multiple is warranted given InterDigital’s potential to grow its revenue by 29% in 2009 and its earnings per share by over 200%."
