The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Basic Materials company by 0.73% to 4.58 million shares with purchase of 32989.0 shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 8.09% valued currently at $254.76 million. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 9235.0 to 3.58 million shares. And EARNEST Partners LLC has lifted its position by 4.17% or 0.11 million shares – to 2.71 million shares.
With over 0.47 million Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (SMG) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $64.04 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $29.83 million. The shares have shown a positive half year performance of 11.14% and its price on 12/22/23 lost nearly -0.42%. Currently, there are 56.50M common shares owned by the public and among those 42.15M 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: 9 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for SMG have a consensus price objective of $62.71. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $70.00 and a low of $49.00. The average price target is -2.12% below its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -30.69% over that period. But an upside of 8.51% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $65.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 105 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 109,073 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 17 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 237,409 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Scotts Miracle-Gro Company are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, iShares Core S&P Mid Cap ETF, and T Rowe Price Mid Cap Value Fund. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 1.32 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $73.32 million. The company bought an additional 1991.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 2.33% of the shares outstanding. iShares Core S&P Mid Cap ETF bought 227.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 1.28 million shares valued at over $71.35 million and representing 2.27% of the shares outstanding. T Rowe Price Mid Cap Value Fund sold 42115.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 1.24 million shares at a value of $68.87 million. T Rowe Price Mid Cap Value Fund now owns shares totaling to 2.19% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE: SMG) opened at $64.50, up $0.19 from a prior closing price of $64.31. However, the script later moved the day high at 65.34, down -0.42%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 5.28% and 23.70% over the past three months. SMG shares are trading 31.80% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 32.45% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $43.67 and touched a high of $88.61 over the same period. SMG has an average intraday trading volume of 777.06K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 7.81%, 18.64%, and 5.90% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE: SMG) shares accounts for 72.70% of the company’s 56.50M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 32.97%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 42.20% and 31.35% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $3.63B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.71. The earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at -$6.79. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 3.75% over the week and 4.04% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (SMG) will achieve an EPS of -$1.43 for the current quarter, $3.31 for the next quarter and $3.82 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$1.94 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of -$1. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was -$1.02 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 120.40%, and 42.53% over the next financial year.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 9 brokerage firm advisors rate Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (SMG) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.44. Specifically, 7 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 2 of the 9 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the SMG, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Stifel stated their Hold rating for the stock in a research note on July 13, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $78-$72.
