Kellogg Company (NYSE: K) Not A Good Play Anymore?

Wellington Management Co. LLP has recently announced that it has increased stake in Kellogg Company (NYSE:K) by 24.43%. After grabbing 13.67 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 2.68 million shares of the Consumer Defensive Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 3.99% having worth around $914.64 million. Moreover, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its share by 0.2 million to have a control over 5.86 million shares. And Charles Schwab Investment Managem raised its holdings to 0.24 million shares by acquiring 5.36 million shares or 1.56% of the stake.

Kellogg Company (K) concluded trading on 09/13/23 at a closing price of $58.92, with 3.01 million shares of worth about $177.4 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained negative as price took a plunge of -8.86% during that period and on Wednesday the price saw a loss of about -1.14%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 343.00M shares, out of which, 318.91M shares are available for trading.

A deeper look into what the analysts at Wall Street are thinking about the price target of this stock provides us with the following: 17 analysts are covering the K stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $70.47. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $82.00 and could fall to a lowest price of $63.00. The stock’s current price level is 17.81% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in gain of 6.48% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $82.00 would mean a gain of 28.15% for the stock.

According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), insiders took part in trade of the company’s stock for 96 times over the past 12 months. They bought 458,033 shares in 47 of the transactions. In 49 selling transactions, insiders dumped 2,551,557 shares.

Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in Kellogg Company Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF is currently holding 7.98 million shares of worth totaling $533.83 million. The company recently came selling 8600.0 shares which brought its stake up to 2.33% of the company’s outstanding shares. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 34653.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares expand to 1.80%, leaving 6.16 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $411.74 million. Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund, after selling 5.95 million shares, have now control over 1.74% of the stake in the company. It holds 8208.0 shares of worth $398.03 million.

Kellogg Company (NYSE: K) started trading at $59.81, above $0.21 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 59.98, or with a loss of -1.14%. Stock saw a price change of -0.64% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of -7.82%. Year-to-date (YTD), K shares are showing a performance of -17.29% which decreased to -18.89% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $58.88 but also hit the highest price of $77.17 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for Kellogg Company shares is 2.34 million. The stock is currently trading -3.07% below its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is down -8.34% for SMA50 and it goes to -12.60% lower than SMA200.

Wellington Management Co. LLP acquired 13.67 million shares of Kellogg Company having value of about $914.64 million. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by Wellington Management Co. LLP revealed that the firm now holds 2.68 million shares in the company valued at close to $158167499.4, or have control over 24.43% stake in the company. Kellogg Company (NYSE: K) currently have 343.00M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 85.60% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 37.07% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 38.42% and 32.35% of the stake respectively.

The stock has a current market capitalization of $20.15B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 0.43. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 23.41, while it has posted earnings per share of $2.52 in the same period. Its PEG reads 8.06 and has Quick Ratio of 0.40 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 1.70. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for K, volatility over the week remained 1.51% while standing at 1.39% over the month.

Analysts are in expectations that Kellogg Company (K) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $AT&T Inc. in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $14.62 and it is $Stocks for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $Citigroup, Inc. which is $Keen Vision Acquisition Corpora at the higher side of the target for the same. When we compare those targets with actual EPS, we find that company posted an EPS of $Unity Software Inc. in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to drop by -35.60% while it is estimated to increase by 3.28% in next year. EPS is likely to grow at an annualized rate of 2.90% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of -5.00% made by the stock over the past 5-years.

Analysts at 17 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the Kellogg Company (K)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Moderate Buy” and assign it a score of 2.90. Out of those 17 Wall Street analysts, 1 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 14 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 2 analyst recommended the stock as “Sell”.

Digging deeper we find that several firms have released their research notes about the support levels of the stock. Most recent of them is a note released by TD Cowen on Sep-14-23 offering a Market perform rating for the stock and assigned a target price of $63 to it.