The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ:WBA). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Healthcare company by 15.08% to 83.53 million shares with purchase of 10.95 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 9.69% valued currently at $2.18 billion. In addition, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings by 0.34 million to 16.14 million shares. And Invesco Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 22.17% or 2.76 million shares – to 15.19 million shares.
Currently, there are 863.67M common shares owned by the public and among those 711.10M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 54 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 26 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 2,181,275 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 28 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 77,521 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Invesco QQQ Trust. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 21.8 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $569.2 million. The company sold -1.23 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 2.53% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 56760.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 17.51 million shares valued at over $457.28 million and representing 2.03% of the shares outstanding. Invesco QQQ Trust sold 40774.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 15.89 million shares at a value of $414.83 million. Invesco QQQ Trust now owns shares totaling to 1.84% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 22.17, down -0.68%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -8.45% and 3.53% over the past three months. WBA shares are trading -15.74% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -38.22% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $19.68 and touched a high of $37.96 over the same period. WBA has an average intraday trading volume of 13.63 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by -12.23%, -4.41%, and -18.44% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ: WBA) shares accounts for 58.52% of the company’s 863.67M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 34.49%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 36.70% and 22.17% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $18.97B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.74. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 33.09, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $0.66. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 3.04% over the week and 3.63% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA) will achieve an EPS of $0.84 for the current quarter, $0.92 for the next quarter and $3.57 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.8 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.91. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.16 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to decrease by -17.54%, and 8.58% over the next financial year.
Looking at the support for the WBA, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Barclays stated their Underweight rating for the stock in a research note on January 03, 2024, with the firm’s price target at $21.
