The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Block Inc (NYSE:SQ). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Technology company by 1.68% to 33.75 million shares with purchase of 0.56 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 6.10% valued currently at $2.61 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 1.33 million to 21.57 million shares.
Currently, there are 539.41M common shares owned by the public and among those 538.19M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 128 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 58 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,905,600 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 70 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 548,103 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Block Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard Extended Market Index Fu, and ARK Innovation ETF. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 17.4 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $1.35 billion. The company bought an additional 0.17 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.14% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Extended Market Index Fu bought 0.23 million shares to see its total holdings expand to 8.19 million shares valued at over $633.62 million and representing 1.48% of the shares outstanding. ARK Innovation ETF sold 35344.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 7.63 million shares at a value of $590.24 million. ARK Innovation ETF now owns shares totaling to 1.38% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 65.57, up 3.60%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -1.34% and 55.73% over the past three months. SQ shares are trading -16.01% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -19.56% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $38.85 and touched a high of $89.97 over the same period. SQ has an average intraday trading volume of 12.31 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 -5.23%, -3.13%, and 7.10% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Block Inc (NYSE: SQ) shares accounts for 60.53% of the company’s 539.41M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 32.89%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 34.47% and 1.63% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $39.90B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 2.51. The earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at -$0.47. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 4.71% over the week and 3.62% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Block Inc (SQ) will achieve an EPS of $0.6 for the current quarter, $0.66 for the next quarter and $3.06 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.45 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.86. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.22 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 94.78%, and 59.85% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 69.31% over the next five years, compared to -41.34% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the SQ, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. BMO Capital Markets stated their Outperform rating for the stock in a research note on December 05, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $84.
