William Blair Investment Manageme recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Virtu Financial Inc (NASDAQ:VIRT). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Financial company by 7.57% to 8.37 million shares with purchase of 0.59 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 9.25% valued currently at $150.5 million. In addition, Millennium Management LLC raised its holdings by 1.84 million to 3.01 million shares. And SSgA Funds Management, Inc. has lifted its position by 9.74% or 0.18 million shares – to 2.06 million shares.
With over 0.47 million Virtu Financial Inc (VIRT) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $20.26 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $9.57 million. The shares have shown a positive half year performance of 18.55% and its price on 12/29/23 lost nearly -0.64%. Currently, there are 98.55M common shares owned by the public and among those 85.29M 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 VIRT have a consensus price objective of $20.11. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $24.00 and a low of $18.00. The average price target is -0.75% below its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -12.56% over that period. But an upside of 15.58% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $20.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 50 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 30 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 566,293 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 20 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 231,434 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Virtu Financial Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund, and Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Fu. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 2.82 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $50.69 million. The company bought an additional 5459.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.12% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund bought 6231.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 2.31 million shares valued at over $41.55 million and representing 2.55% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Fu sold 6255.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 1.6 million shares at a value of $28.85 million. Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Fu now owns shares totaling to 1.77% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Virtu Financial Inc (NASDAQ: VIRT) opened at $20.43, up $0.04 from a prior closing price of $20.39. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -1.84% and 17.31% over the past three months. VIRT shares are trading -0.73% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -0.64% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $16.26 and touched a high of $21.66 over the same period. VIRT has an average intraday trading volume of 829.57K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 3.31%, 8.92%, and 10.79% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Virtu Financial Inc (NASDAQ: VIRT) shares accounts for 83.10% of the company’s 98.55M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 39.79%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 43.61% and 112.89% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $1.83B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.36. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 12.48, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $1.62. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio at 4.34. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 0.92% over the week and 1.85% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Virtu Financial Inc (VIRT) will achieve an EPS of $0.48 for the current quarter, $0.61 for the next quarter and $2.34 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.42 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.52. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.37 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to decrease by -31.91%, and 14.74% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of -2.30% over the next five years, compared to 141.10% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 9 brokerage firm advisors rate Virtu Financial Inc (VIRT) as a “Moderate Buy” at a consensus score of 2.11. Specifically, 4 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 5 of the 9 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the VIRT, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. BofA Securities stated their Buy rating for the stock in a research note on November 28, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $20.
