Analyst Maintains Buy Rating on Armstrong

New York, NY, July 14, 2010--After a meeting with management, analyst Stifel Nicolaus has maintained its "buy" rating on Armstrong World Industries, calling it "the least expensive stock in our universe."

"We believe the primary strategic changes will be a greater emphasis on growth, not just cash flow, with a focus on international expansion," Stifel said about the emphasis of the company's new CFO and CEO. However, it said that this emphasis would probably take time to materialize as the new management goes through a learning curve.

"The fact that the company has only 7% of its revenue base in emerging markets is clearly a sore point with the Board and will get addressed quickly," Stifel said.

Stifel said it expects that Armstrong's sales were reasonably strong in the U.S. in April and May, but may have shown a slower rate of growth in June.

Stifel said it's likely that first half 2010 sales results for Armstrong have exceeded the company’s internal projections used to guide 2010 earnings.