Capital Research & Management Co recently announced the acquisition of new stake in MercadoLibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Consumer Cyclical company by 12.64% to 2.91 million shares with purchase of 0.33 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 5.76% valued currently at $4.58 billion. In addition, Jennison Associates LLC raised its holdings by 28095.0 to 2.23 million shares. And Capital Research & Management Co has lifted its position by 18.60% or 0.16 million shares – to 1.03 million shares.
With over 0.44 million MercadoLibre Inc (MELI) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $1658.58 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $725.19 million. The shares have shown a positive half year performance of 46.04% and its price on 01/12/24 gained nearly 4.20%. Currently, there are 50.26M common shares owned by the public and among those 44.98M 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: 21 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for MELI have a consensus price objective of $1829.68. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $2150.00 and a low of $1500.00. The average price target is 9.35% above its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -10.57% over that period. But an upside of 22.86% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $1850.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 11 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 8 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 714 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 3 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 450 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in MercadoLibre Inc are Vanguard International Growth Fun, American Funds EuroPacific Growth, and Invesco QQQ Trust. Vanguard International Growth Fun owns 1.89 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $2.96 billion. The company sold 2699.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.73% of the shares outstanding. American Funds EuroPacific Growth sold 88580.0 shares to see its total holdings shrink to 1.38 million shares valued at over $2.17 billion and representing 2.73% of the shares outstanding. Invesco QQQ Trust sold 2378.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 0.93 million shares at a value of $1.46 billion. Invesco QQQ Trust now owns shares totaling to 1.84% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of MercadoLibre Inc (NASDAQ: MELI) opened at $1,610.00, up $18.32 from a prior closing price of $1591.68. However, the script later moved the day high at 1,677.73, up 4.20%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 7.78% and 34.85% over the past three months. MELI shares are trading 5.54% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 77.05% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $933.57 and touched a high of $1660.00 over the same period. MELI has an average intraday trading volume of 381.60K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 4.96%, 8.94%, and 25.26% respectively.
Institutional ownership of MercadoLibre Inc (NASDAQ: MELI) shares accounts for 82.45% of the company’s 50.26M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 4.64%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 49.91% and 32.84% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $83.86B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.51. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 85.44, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $19.41. The company has a PEG of 1.33 and a Quick Ratio of 1.24 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 2.19. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.64% over the week and 2.29% over the month.
Analysts forecast that MercadoLibre Inc (MELI) will achieve an EPS of $7.4 for the current quarter, $7.07 for the next quarter and $34.26 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $5.55 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $9.39. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $3.25 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 137.44%, and 50.22% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 64.30% over the next five years, compared to 98.32% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 21 brokerage firm advisors rate MercadoLibre Inc (MELI) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.43. Specifically, 16 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 4 of the 21 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the MELI, 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 27, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $2000.
