• Baird is positive on K-12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN)'s leadership position and growing market opportunity for expansion. The firm started shares with an Outperform rating and $26 target. Shares were also initiated at Morgan Stanley with an Equal Weight rating and at Credit Suisse with an Outperform rating.
• Bear initiated ChinaEdu (NASDAQ: CEDU) with an Outperform rating and $11.20 target and said demand for post-secondary education in is outstripping the capacity of land based universities and that CEDU will benefit from the governments strategy to raise education levels. Piper, which started shares with a Buy rating and $10 target, believes the online higher education market is still in the relatively early stages as online student enrollments represent less than one-fourth of total university enrollments.
• William Blair believes Cardtronics (NASDAQ: CATM) has a highly attractive opportunity to increase the number of ATM sites it operates. The firm assumed coverage with an Outperform rating.

• MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) was initiated with an Overweight rating and $24 target at Lehman, at Deutsche Bank with a Buy rating and $25 target and at Wachovia with a Market Perform rating.
• Jefferies initiated VanceInfo (NYSE: VIT) with a Buy rating and $11 target.
• Susquehanna initiated Under Armour (NYSE: UA) with a Neutral rating.

Analyst initiations: LRN, CEDU and CATM originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.