BlackRock Fund Advisors has recently announced that it has increased stake in Leslies Inc (NASDAQ:LESL) by 12.04%. After grabbing 25.59 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 2.75 million shares of the Consumer Cyclical Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 13.91% having worth around $126.14 million. Moreover, Ariel Investments LLC increased its share by 8.4 million to have a control over 24.99 million shares. And The Vanguard Group, Inc. raised its holdings to 0.62 million shares by acquiring 18.3 million shares or 9.95% of the stake.
Leslies Inc (LESL) concluded trading on 12/21/23 at a closing price of $6.81, with 2.11 million shares of worth about $14.35 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained negative as price took a plunge of -27.48% during that period and on Thursday the price saw a gain of about 5.58%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 184.33M shares, out of which, 177.43M shares are available for trading.
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According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), insiders took part in trade of the company’s stock for 22 times over the past 12 months. They bought 576,129 shares in 17 of the transactions. In 5 selling transactions, insiders dumped 176,919 shares.
iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF, Ariel Fund, and Janus Henderson Triton Fund are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in Leslies Inc iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF is currently holding 12.29 million shares of worth totaling $60.6 million. The company recently came buying 6816.0 shares which brought its stake up to 6.68% of the company’s outstanding shares. Ariel Fund bought 5.9 million shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares expand to 6.23%, leaving 11.47 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $56.52 million. Janus Henderson Triton Fund, after buying 5.96 million shares, have now control over 3.24% of the stake in the company. It holds 0.0 shares of worth $29.39 million.
Leslies Inc (NASDAQ: LESL) started trading at $6.57, above $0.12 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 6.84, or with a gain of 5.58%. Stock saw a price change of 2.71% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of 21.17%. Year-to-date (YTD), LESL shares are showing a performance of -44.23% which decreased to -43.25% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $4.39 but also hit the highest price of $17.12 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for Leslies Inc shares is 3.94 million. The stock is currently trading 18.98% above its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is up 26.89% for SMA50 and it goes to -12.75% lower than SMA200.
BlackRock Fund Advisors acquired 25.59 million shares of Leslies Inc having value of about $126.14 million. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by BlackRock Fund Advisors revealed that the firm now holds 2.75 million shares in the company valued at close to $18723032.64, or have control over 12.04% stake in the company. Leslies Inc (NASDAQ: LESL) currently have 184.33M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 115.95% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 64.43% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 97.29% and 52.12% of the stake respectively.
The stock has a current market capitalization of $1.26B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 0.79. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 46.84, while it has posted earnings per share of $0.15 in the same period. Its PEG reads 4.83 and has Quick Ratio of 0.48. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for LESL, volatility over the week remained 5.46% while standing at 8.12% over the month.
Analysts are in expectations that Leslies Inc (LESL) stock would likely to be making an EPS of -$0.21 in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is -$0.17 and it is $0.41 for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target -$0.24 which is -$0.19 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 -$0.14 in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to drop by -1.19% while it is estimated to increase by 46.47% in next year. EPS is likely to shrink at an annualized rate of 9.70% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of 9.95% made by the stock over the past 5-years.
Analysts at 12 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the Leslies Inc (LESL)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Moderate Buy” and assign it a score of 2.67. Out of those 12 Wall Street analysts, 2 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 10 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 0 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 Telsey Advisory Group on November 29, 2023 offering a Market perform rating for the stock and assigned a target price range of between $7.50 and $6 to it.
