The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Verizon Communications Inc (NYSE:VZ). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Communication Services company by 0.23% to 333.47 million shares with purchase of 0.76 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 7.93% valued currently at $12.57 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 99663.0 to 223.11 million shares. And Charles Schwab Investment Managem has lifted its position by 4.84% or 4.53 million shares – to 98.03 million shares.
Currently, there are 4.20B common shares owned by the public and among those 4.20B 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
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 99 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 43 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,105,125 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 56 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 659,859 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Verizon Communications Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 118.78 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $4.48 billion. The company bought an additional 0.21 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 2.83% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 0.2 million shares to see its total holdings expand to 102.66 million shares valued at over $3.87 billion and representing 2.44% of the shares outstanding. Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF bought 68473.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 51.73 million shares at a value of $1.95 billion. Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF now owns shares totaling to 1.23% of the shares outstanding.
The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 7.81% and 25.85% over the past three months. VZ shares are trading 12.47% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 5.13% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $30.14 and touched a high of $42.34 over the same period. VZ has an average intraday trading volume of 22.08 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 7.81%, 11.06%, and 18.95% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Verizon Communications Inc (NYSE: VZ) shares accounts for 61.93% of the company’s 4.20B shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 29.53%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 32.91% and 0.25% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $178.25B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.41. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 15.38, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $2.76. The company has a PEG of 8.13 and a Quick Ratio of 0.65 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 1.89. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.24% over the week and 1.97% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Verizon Communications Inc (VZ) will achieve an EPS of $1.03 for the current quarter, $1.05 for the next quarter and $4.33 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.98 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $1.1. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.2 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to decrease by -2.54%, and 2.60% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 1.89% over the next five years, compared to -6.06% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the VZ, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Daiwa Securities stated their Outperform rating for the stock in a research note on January 24, 2024, with the firm’s price target at $36-$47.
