SSgA Funds Management, Inc. has recently announced that it has increased stake in W.R. Berkley Corp. (NYSE:WRB) by 2.94%. After grabbing 11.11 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 0.32 million shares of the Financial Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 4.31% having worth around $748.91 million. Moreover, Janus Henderson Investors US LLC increased its share by 1.58 million to have a control over 8.11 million shares. And Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment raised its holdings to 0.3 million shares by acquiring 6.82 million shares or 2.65% of the stake.
W.R. Berkley Corp. (WRB) concluded trading on 11/30/23 at a closing price of $72.55, with 6.06 million shares of worth about $439.6 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained positive as price took a surge of 28.47% during that period and on Thursday the price saw a gain of about 2.81%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 264.55M shares, out of which, 201.51M shares are available for trading.
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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 WRB stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $74.33. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $85.00 and could fall to a lowest price of $62.00. The stock’s current price level is 2.39% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in loss of -17.02% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $85.00 would mean a gain of 14.65% 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 24 times over the past 12 months. They bought 258,473 shares in 18 of the transactions. In 6 selling transactions, insiders dumped 9,295 shares.
Eaton Vance Atlanta Capital SMID, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, and Vanguard 500 Index Fund are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in W.R. Berkley Corp. Eaton Vance Atlanta Capital SMID is currently holding 8.5 million shares of worth totaling $572.97 million. The company recently came buying 0.34 million shares which brought its stake up to 3.30% of the company’s outstanding shares. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF bought 39041.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares expand to 2.35%, leaving 6.04 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $407.35 million. Vanguard 500 Index Fund, after buying 4.91 million shares, have now control over 1.91% of the stake in the company. It holds 21715.0 shares of worth $331.12 million.
W.R. Berkley Corp. (NYSE: WRB) started trading at $70.62, above $0.05 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 72.74, or with a gain of 2.81%. Stock saw a price change of 2.08% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of 7.61%. Year-to-date (YTD), WRB shares are showing a performance of 1.44% which decreased to -1.90% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $55.07 but also hit the highest price of $75.88 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for W.R. Berkley Corp. shares is 1.13 million. The stock is currently trading 4.65% above its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is up 9.07% for SMA50 and it goes to 16.81% higher than SMA200.
SSgA Funds Management, Inc. acquired 11.11 million shares of W.R. Berkley Corp. having value of about $748.91 million. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by SSgA Funds Management, Inc. revealed that the firm now holds 0.32 million shares in the company valued at close to $22988047.9, or have control over 2.94% stake in the company. W.R. Berkley Corp. (NYSE: WRB) currently have 264.55M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 68.13% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 29.44% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 39.00% and 22.36% of the stake respectively.
The stock has a current market capitalization of $18.71B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 0.58. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 14.61, while it has posted earnings per share of $4.96 in the same period. Its PEG reads 1.62 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 0.44. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for WRB, volatility over the week remained 1.62% while standing at 1.41% over the month.
Analysts are in expectations that W.R. Berkley Corp. (WRB) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $1.36 in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $1.44 and it is $5.78 for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $1.27 which is $1.47 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 $1.16 in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to rise by 9.72% while it is estimated to increase by 20.69% in next year. EPS is likely to shrink at an annualized rate of 9.00% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of 21.18% made by the stock over the past 5-years.
Analysts at 16 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the W.R. Berkley Corp. (WRB)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Strong Buy” and assign it a score of 1.88. Out of those 16 Wall Street analysts, 10 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 5 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 1 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 BofA Securities on March 15, 2023 offering a Buy rating for the stock and assigned a target price range of between $77 and $76 to it.
