The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Blade Air Mobility Inc (NASDAQ:BLDE). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Industrials company by 0.80% to 2.77 million shares with purchase of 22090.0 shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 3.72% valued currently at $9.79 million. In addition, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings by 70671.0 to 1.18 million shares.
With over 0.48 million Blade Air Mobility Inc (BLDE) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $2.88 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $1.39 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -28.00% and its price on 01/12/24 lost nearly -3.03%. Currently, there are 71.66M common shares owned by the public and among those 45.38M shares have been available to trade.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 62 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 21 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 505,827 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 41 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 777,471 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Blade Air Mobility Inc are ARK Autonomous Technology & Robot, Nikko Asset Global Mobility Servi, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. ARK Autonomous Technology & Robot owns 4.88 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $17.23 million. The company sold 13448.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 6.54% of the shares outstanding. Nikko Asset Global Mobility Servi bought 43387.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 2.39 million shares valued at over $8.45 million and representing 3.21% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF now owns shares totaling to 2.38% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 3.0300, down -3.03%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -7.99% and 27.43% over the past three months. BLDE shares are trading -18.41% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -20.44% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $2.06 and touched a high of $5.09 over the same period. BLDE has an average intraday trading volume of 719.46K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by -12.62%, -8.76%, and -9.60% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Blade Air Mobility Inc (NASDAQ: BLDE) shares accounts for 41.99% of the company’s 71.66M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 24.32%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 31.60% and 17.68% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $214.93M and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.18. The earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at -$0.52. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 4.54% over the week and 6.45% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Blade Air Mobility Inc (BLDE) will achieve an EPS of -$0.12 for the current quarter, -$0.11 for the next quarter and -$0.37 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$0.16 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of -$0.08. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was -$0.21 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 3.77%, and 12.37% over the next financial year.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 5 brokerage firm advisors rate Blade Air Mobility Inc (BLDE) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.00. Specifically, 5 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 0 of the 5 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the BLDE, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Ladenburg Thalmann stated their Buy rating for the stock in a research note on July 18, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $13.
