BlackRock Fund Advisors recently announced the acquisition of new stake in PPL Corp (NYSE:PPL). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Utilities company by 0.90% to 50.12 million shares with purchase of 0.45 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 6.80% valued currently at $1.31 billion. In addition, Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Manageme raised its holdings by 0.73 million to 15.89 million shares. And Geode Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 1.95% or 0.3 million shares – to 15.82 million shares.
With over 19.91 million PPL Corp (PPL) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $26.90 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $535.65 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -0.33% and its price on 12/15/23 lost nearly -0.52%. Currently, there are 736.49M common shares owned by the public and among those 735.25M 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: 13 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for PPL have a consensus price objective of $28.73. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $32.00 and a low of $25.00. The average price target is 6.37% above its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -7.6% over that period. But an upside of 15.94% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $29.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 48 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 22 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 231,068 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 26 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 134,475 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in PPL Corp are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 23.02 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $601.16 million. The company bought an additional 63575.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.12% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 78153.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 17.79 million shares valued at over $464.74 million and representing 2.41% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund bought 41561.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 16.74 million shares at a value of $437.17 million. Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund now owns shares totaling to 2.27% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of PPL Corp (NYSE: PPL) opened at $26.77, down -$0.27 from a prior closing price of $27.04. However, the script later moved the day high at 26.92, down -0.52%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 3.22% and 4.79% over the past three months. PPL shares are trading -7.94% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -8.57% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $22.20 and touched a high of $31.74 over the same period. PPL has an average intraday trading volume of 6.46 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 2.27%, 6.67%, and 2.25% respectively.
Institutional ownership of PPL Corp (NYSE: PPL) shares accounts for 74.91% of the company’s 736.49M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 31.60%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 43.50% and 0.29% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $19.83B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.85. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 25.64, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $1.05. The company has a PEG of 1.49 and a Quick Ratio of 0.79 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 1.06. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.42% over the week and 1.59% over the month.
Analysts forecast that PPL Corp (PPL) will achieve an EPS of $0.38 for the current quarter, $0.51 for the next quarter and $1.71 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.35 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.4. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.28 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 12.42%, and 7.82% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 17.21% over the next five years, compared to -10.00% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 13 brokerage firm advisors rate PPL Corp (PPL) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.77. Specifically, 7 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 4 of the 13 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the PPL, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. UBS stated their Neutral rating for the stock in a research note on October 04, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $29-$25.
