The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Avantor Inc. (NYSE:AVTR). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Basic Materials company by 0.27% to 63.98 million shares with purchase of 0.17 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 9.46% valued currently at $1.12 billion. In addition, Boston Partners Global Investors, raised its holdings by 4.95 million to 28.08 million shares. And BlackRock Fund Advisors has lifted its position by 0.28% or 69601.0 shares – to 24.52 million shares.
With over 7.08 million Avantor Inc. (AVTR) shares trading Tuesday and a closing price of $19.80 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $140.11 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -5.17% and its price on 11/21/23 gained nearly 1.85%. Currently, there are 674.30M common shares owned by the public and among those 659.09M 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: 22 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for AVTR have a consensus price objective of $22.99. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $30.00 and a low of $18.00. The average price target is 13.84% above its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -10.0% over that period. But an upside of 34.0% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $22.75.
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). 31 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 889,206 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 60 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 548,848 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Avantor Inc. are Canada Pension Plan, T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. Canada Pension Plan owns 24.37 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $424.73 million. The company bought an additional 24000.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.60% of the shares outstanding. T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation sold -1.6 million shares to see its total holdings shrink to 22.96 million shares valued at over $400.24 million and representing 3.40% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF bought 74782.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 21.13 million shares at a value of $368.36 million. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF now owns shares totaling to 3.13% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Avantor Inc. (NYSE: AVTR) opened at $19.65, up $0.21 from a prior closing price of $19.44. However, the script later moved the day high at 20.23, up 1.85%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 5.10% and -8.88% over the past three months. AVTR shares are trading -6.12% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -5.17% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $16.63 and touched a high of $25.25 over the same period. AVTR has an average intraday trading volume of 7.57 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 6.40%, -1.42%, and -5.55% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Avantor Inc. (NYSE: AVTR) shares accounts for 92.12% of the company’s 674.30M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 6.00%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 56.65% and 35.98% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $13.39B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.31. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 36.84, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $0.54. The company has a PEG of 1.64 and a Quick Ratio of 1.03 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 1.10. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.80% over the week and 3.72% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Avantor Inc. (AVTR) will achieve an EPS of $0.22 for the current quarter, $0.25 for the next quarter and $1.1 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.21 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.25. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.32 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to decrease by -26.03%, and 5.90% over the next financial year.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 22 brokerage firm advisors rate Avantor Inc. (AVTR) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.77. Specifically, 12 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 7 of the 22 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the AVTR, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Bernstein stated their Mkt Perform rating for the stock in a research note on September 28, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $22.
