The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in United Natural Foods Inc. (NYSE:UNFI). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Consumer Defensive company by 3.70% to 7.27 million shares with purchase of 0.26 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 12.24% valued currently at $105.83 million. In addition, Pacer Advisors, Inc. raised its holdings by 1.1 million to 3.21 million shares. And Invesco Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 10.86% or 0.2 million shares – to 2.04 million shares.
With over 0.47 million United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $16.23 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $7.61 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -16.98% and its price on 12/29/23 lost nearly -2.11%. Currently, there are 58.50M common shares owned by the public and among those 57.78M 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: 14 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for UNFI have a consensus price objective of $14.44. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $18.00 and a low of $11.00. The average price target is -12.4% below its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -47.55% over that period. But an upside of 9.83% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $15.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 36 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 7 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 136,827 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 29 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 120,343 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in United Natural Foods Inc. are Pacer Fds. Tr. – US Small Cap Cas, iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. Pacer Fds. Tr. – US Small Cap Cas owns 4.65 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $67.67 million. The company bought an additional 55593.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 7.83% of the shares outstanding. iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF bought 2172.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 3.92 million shares valued at over $57.08 million and representing 6.60% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF now owns shares totaling to 3.13% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of United Natural Foods Inc. (NYSE: UNFI) opened at $16.46, down -$0.12 from a prior closing price of $16.58. However, the script later moved the day high at 16.56, down -2.11%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 0.06% and 14.78% over the past three months. UNFI shares are trading -58.07% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -58.04% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $12.88 and touched a high of $43.95 over the same period. UNFI has an average intraday trading volume of 991.03K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 2.46%, 5.59%, and -19.83% respectively.
Institutional ownership of United Natural Foods Inc. (NYSE: UNFI) shares accounts for 89.58% of the company’s 58.50M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 61.09%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 7.38% and 28.75% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $964.22M and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.67. The earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at -$1.40. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.28% over the week and 5.10% over the month.
Analysts forecast that United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) will achieve an EPS of -$0.05 for the current quarter, $0.12 for the next quarter and $0.73 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$0.35 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.12. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.78 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to decrease by -97.22%, and 1143.59% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of -6.58% over the next five years, compared to -34.42% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 14 brokerage firm advisors rate United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) as a “Moderate Buy” at a consensus score of 2.86. Specifically, 1 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 13 of the 14 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the UNFI, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. UBS stated their Neutral rating for the stock in a research note on March 13, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $48-$32.
