The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Edwards Lifesciences Corp (NYSE:EW). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Healthcare company by 0.62% to 49.08 million shares with purchase of 0.3 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 8.09% valued currently at $3.13 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.3 million to 31.56 million shares. And Capital Research & Management Co has lifted its position by 11.99% or 3.24 million shares – to 30.25 million shares.
With over 3.5 million Edwards Lifesciences Corp (EW) shares trading Tuesday and a closing price of $66.96 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $234.13 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -20.98% and its price on 11/21/23 lost nearly -0.34%. Currently, there are 608.30M common shares owned by the public and among those 597.51M shares have been available to trade.
3 Tiny Stocks Primed to Explode
The world's greatest investor — Warren Buffett — has a simple formula for making big money in the markets. He buys up valuable assets when they are very cheap. For stock market investors that means buying up cheap small cap stocks like these with huge upside potential.
We've set up an alert service to help smart investors take full advantage of the small cap stocks primed for big returns.
Click here for full details and to join for free
Sponsored
An analysis of what Wall Street brokers have to say about the expected price targets for this stock gives us this picture: 32 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for EW have a consensus price objective of $80.47. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $102.00 and a low of $63.00. The average price target is 16.79% above its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -6.29% over that period. But an upside of 34.35% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $80.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 200 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 88 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,077,670 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 112 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 916,887 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Edwards Lifesciences Corp are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Vanguard Health Care Fund. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 19.03 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $1.21 billion. The company bought an additional 82040.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.14% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 73868.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 14.68 million shares valued at over $935.66 million and representing 2.42% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Health Care Fund sold -0.28 million shares to bring its total holdings to over 9.39 million shares at a value of $598.08 million. Vanguard Health Care Fund now owns shares totaling to 1.55% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Edwards Lifesciences Corp (NYSE: EW) opened at $67.74, up $0.55 from a prior closing price of $67.19. However, the script later moved the day high at 67.87, down -0.34%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 1.78% and -11.78% over the past three months. EW shares are trading -10.25% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -10.77% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $60.57 and touched a high of $94.87 over the same period. EW has an average intraday trading volume of 4.12 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 1.96%, -2.86%, and -16.16% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Edwards Lifesciences Corp (NYSE: EW) shares accounts for 84.54% of the company’s 608.30M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 35.90%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 49.38% and 1.16% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $40.61B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.01. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 28.63, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $2.34. The company has a PEG of 3.26 and a Quick Ratio of 2.45 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.10. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.00% over the week and 3.00% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Edwards Lifesciences Corp (EW) will achieve an EPS of $0.64 for the current quarter, $0.67 for the next quarter and $2.81 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.63 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.66. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.64 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 1.21%, and 12.09% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 8.78% over the next five years, compared to 22.06% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 32 brokerage firm advisors rate Edwards Lifesciences Corp (EW) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.97. Specifically, 15 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 12 of the 32 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the EW, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Oppenheimer stated their Outperform rating for the stock in a research note on September 26, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $90.
