Capital Research & Management Co recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Industrials company by 190.27% to 44.03 million shares with purchase of 28.86 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 7.39% valued currently at $1.27 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.12 million to 27.04 million shares. And T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. has lifted its position by 1.51% or 0.36 million shares – to 24.24 million shares.
Currently, there are 594.00M common shares owned by the public and among those 593.60M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 30 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 20 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 320,995 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 10 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 70,265 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Southwest Airlines Co are Vanguard PRIMECAP Fund, American Balanced Fund, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. Vanguard PRIMECAP Fund owns 25.44 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $734.68 million. The company sold 3270.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 4.27% of the shares outstanding. American Balanced Fund bought 7.0 million shares to see its total holdings expand to 24.61 million shares valued at over $710.71 million and representing 4.13% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF bought 16394.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 18.73 million shares at a value of $540.81 million. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF now owns shares totaling to 3.14% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 31.15, down -0.99%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 0.33% and 27.50% over the past three months. LUV shares are trading 4.19% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -18.39% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $21.91 and touched a high of $39.53 over the same period. LUV has an average intraday trading volume of 8.79 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 2.61%, 7.60%, and 0.66% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE: LUV) shares accounts for 81.39% of the company’s 594.00M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 27.12%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 54.46% and 10.26% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $17.94B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.14. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 40.92, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $0.74. The company has a PEG of 1.57 and a Quick Ratio of 1.08 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.87. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 4.00% over the week and 3.33% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Southwest Airlines Co (LUV) will achieve an EPS of -$0.26 for the current quarter, $0.67 for the next quarter and $2.25 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is -$0.55 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.01. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was -$0.27 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 2.74%, and 44.65% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 25.99% over the next five years, compared to -28.35% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the LUV, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. TD Cowen stated their Market Perform rating for the stock in a research note on January 26, 2024, with the firm’s price target at $20-$26.
