Jefferies & Co. initiated its rating on shares of Velti Plc (NASDAQ: VELT) with a buy rating and a price target of $16.50. The company's unique advantage is that it offers customers the ability to deploy mobile marketing campaigns on a global basis, the brokerage said.

The brokerage established its 2010 EPS estimate of $0.03, its 2011 estimate of $0.30 and its 2012 estimate of $0.57.

Velti addresses a high-growth industry segment (mobile marketing) with extensive reach (global), an attractive model (Saas), and solid EBITDA margins (about 30 percent). We believe Velti can derive significant and measurable value for its customers, which should drive high revenue and EPS growth. In January 2011, Jefferies acted as Bookrunner on the company's IPO, said Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies.

Misek believes that the mobile marketing market is attractive: Users will be spending increasing time consuming media on mobile devices versus other technologies; Content creators are looking for ways to monetize this new channel; and Mobile marketing provides the ability to persistently stay with the user for an immersive and integrated experience that can span multiple use cases.

Misek said Velti growth drivers are: Mobile marketing is just now starting to receive independent budgetary attention from advertisers; Geographic expansion into the U.S., India, and Brazil; and Expansion of indirect sales (i.e., agencies), especially in the U.S.

Misek said his main secular growth themes are: he sees mobile marketing benefitting and enabling two of the three themes, namely tablets and mobile broadband data, as the various ecosystem players look to monetize their large and increasing investments.

Misek said tablets and mobile touch devices cannibalize PCs and change computing allowing for more interactive and easy to use computing experiences. Super data centers arise and bring cloud-based services and media to the masses with 10x to 100x computing power. Wireless and Wireline Broadband data explosion occurs at higher than forecast rates with mobile video becoming a significant driver of bandwidth usage.

The shares of the United Kingdom-based Velti closed Tuesday's regular trading down 0.08 percent at $13.43 on the NASDAQ stock market.

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