An Important Check-Up On Fastenal Company (NASDAQ: FAST)

The Vanguard Group, Inc. has recently announced that it has increased stake in Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST) by 0.23%. After grabbing 67.27 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 0.16 million shares of the Industrials Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 11.77% having worth around $3.94 billion. Moreover, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its share by 0.45 million to have a control over 14.12 million shares. And Charles Schwab Investment Managem raised its holdings to 2.08 million shares by acquiring 13.41 million shares or 2.35% of the stake.

Fastenal Company (FAST) concluded trading on 09/14/23 at a closing price of $54.82, with 2.55 million shares of worth about $139.52 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained positive as price took a surge of 6.32% during that period and on Thursday the price saw a gain of about 0.22%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 571.10M shares, out of which, 570.34M 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: 16 analysts are covering the FAST stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $56.57. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $61.30 and could fall to a lowest price of $50.00. The stock’s current price level is 4.99% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in loss of -9.64% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $61.30 would mean a gain of 10.57% 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 12 times over the past 12 months. They bought 45,064 shares in 9 of the transactions. In 3 selling transactions, insiders dumped 35,624 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 Fastenal Company Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF is currently holding 17.78 million shares of worth totaling $1.04 billion. The company recently came selling 18590.0 shares which brought its stake up to 3.11% of the company’s outstanding shares. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 76719.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares expand to 2.39%, leaving 13.67 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $801.37 million. Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund, after selling 13.21 million shares, have now control over 2.31% of the stake in the company. It holds 21523.0 shares of worth $774.41 million.

Fastenal Company (NASDAQ: FAST) started trading at $55.11, above $0.41 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 55.19, or with a gain of 0.22%. Stock saw a price change of -0.94% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of -4.74%. Year-to-date (YTD), FAST shares are showing a performance of 15.85% which increased to 14.16% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $43.73 but also hit the highest price of $59.43 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for Fastenal Company shares is 3.05 million. The stock is currently trading -2.96% below its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is down -4.22% for SMA50 and it goes to 2.20% higher than SMA200.

The Vanguard Group, Inc. acquired 67.27 million shares of Fastenal Company having value of about $3.94 billion. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by The Vanguard Group, Inc. revealed that the firm now holds 0.16 million shares in the company valued at close to $8587991.56, or have control over 0.23% stake in the company. Fastenal Company (NASDAQ: FAST) currently have 571.10M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 79.30% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 43.68% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 6.47% and 38.21% of the stake respectively.

The stock has a current market capitalization of $31.80B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 1.15. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 27.97, while it has posted earnings per share of $1.96 in the same period. Its PEG reads 4.42 and has Quick Ratio of 2.10 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 0.10. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for FAST, volatility over the week remained 1.33% while standing at 1.50% over the month.

Analysts are in expectations that Fastenal Company (FAST) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $Direxion Financial Bull 3X Shar in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $68.89 and it is $ETF for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $Fastenal Company which is $Carrols Restaurant Group, Inc. 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 $FAT Brands Inc. in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to rise by 17.80% while it is estimated to increase by 6.54% in next year. EPS is likely to shrink at an annualized rate of 6.33% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of 14.50% made by the stock over the past 5-years.

Analysts at 16 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the Fastenal Company (FAST)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Hold” and assign it a score of 3.10. Out of those 16 Wall Street analysts, 1 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 10 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 3 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 Stephens on July 13, 2023 offering an Equal-weight rating for the stock and assigned a target price of $60 to it.