The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in The Gap Inc. (NYSE:GPS). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Consumer Cyclical company by 15.40% to 26.49 million shares with purchase of 3.53 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 7.16% valued currently at $306.73 million. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 1.13 million to 17.84 million shares. And Dimensional Fund Advisors LP has lifted its position by 33.49% or 2.73 million shares – to 10.87 million shares.
With over 24.39 million The Gap Inc. (GPS) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $11.20 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $273.13 million. The shares have shown a positive half year performance of 11.67% and its price on 09/15/23 gained nearly 1.91%. Currently, there are 369.00M common shares owned by the public and among those 206.00M shares have been available to trade.
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An analysis of what Wall Street brokers have to say about the expected price targets for this stock gives us this picture: 21 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for GPS have a consensus price objective of $10.81. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $18.00 and a low of $6.00. The average price target is -3.42% below its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -86.67% over that period. But an upside of 37.78% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $10.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 91 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 43 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,338,937 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 48 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 1,453,168 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in The Gap Inc. are Dodge & Cox Stock Fund, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, and Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund. Dodge & Cox Stock Fund owns 26.73 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $309.53 million. The company bought an additional 98000.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 7.23% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF sold 1120.0 shares to see its total holdings shrink to 8.73 million shares valued at over $101.05 million and representing 2.36% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund bought 32988.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 7.19 million shares at a value of $83.25 million. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund now owns shares totaling to 1.94% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 11.46, up 1.91%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -0.62% and 15.35% over the past three months. GPS shares are trading -0.71% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 19.91% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $7.22 and touched a high of $15.49 over the same period. GPS has an average intraday trading volume of 7.54 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 3.99%, 9.44%, and 3.87% respectively.
Institutional ownership of The Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) shares accounts for 59.30% of the company’s 369.00M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 33.01%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 85.26% and 29.68% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $4.07B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.92. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 38.23, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $0.29. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 3.79% over the week and 3.85% over the month.
Analysts forecast that The Gap Inc. (GPS) will achieve an EPS of $0.16 for the current quarter, $0.15 for the next quarter and $0.86 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$0.19 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.24. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.71 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to decrease by -188.60%, and 28.40% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of -3.21% over the next five years, compared to -17.60% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 21 brokerage firm advisors rate The Gap Inc. (GPS) as a “Hold” at a consensus score of 3.10. Specifically, 3 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 11 of the 21 advise that investors “hold,” and 2 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the GPS, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Barclays stated their Overweight rating for the stock in a research note on August 01, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $9-$13.
