The Vanguard Group, Inc. has recently announced that it has increased stake in Heartland Express Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) by 1.62%. After grabbing 5.23 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 83068.0 shares of the Industrials Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 6.62% having worth around $80.15 million. Moreover, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its share by 38243.0 to have a control over 3.02 million shares. And Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings to 20989.0 shares by acquiring 0.9 million shares or 1.14% of the stake.
Heartland Express Inc. (HTLD) concluded trading on 01/18/23 at a closing price of $16.52, with 0.19 million shares of worth about $3.22 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained positive as price took a surge of 12.53% during that period and on Wednesday the price saw a gain of about 0.67%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 78.94M shares, out of which, 44.37M shares are available for trading.
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A deeper look into what the analysts at Wall Street are thinking about the price target of this stock provides us with the following: 9 analysts are covering the HTLD stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $16.86. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $19.00 and could fall to a lowest price of $14.00. The stock’s current price level is 2.02% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in loss of -18.0% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $19.00 would mean a gain of 13.05% for the stock.
According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), insiders took part in trade of the company’s stock for 11 times over the past 12 months. They bought 22,530 shares in 10 of the transactions. In 1 selling transactions, insiders dumped 1,227 shares.
American Century Mid Cap Value Fu, iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF, and American Century Value Fund are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in Heartland Express Inc. American Century Mid Cap Value Fu is currently holding 4.1 million shares of worth totaling $62.95 million. The company recently came buying 0.0 shares which brought its stake up to 5.20% of the company’s outstanding shares. iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF sold 2616.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares shrunk to 4.37%, leaving 3.45 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $52.85 million. American Century Value Fund, after selling 1.46 million shares, have now control over 1.85% of the stake in the company. It holds -0.22 million shares of worth $22.39 million.
Heartland Express Inc. (NASDAQ: HTLD) started trading at $16.55, above $0.14 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 16.81, or with a gain of 0.67%. Stock saw a price change of 3.44% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of 0.92%. Year-to-date (YTD), HTLD shares are showing a performance of 7.69% which increased to 3.57% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $12.78 but also hit the highest price of $17.32 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for Heartland Express Inc. shares is 292.46K. The stock is currently trading 4.23% above its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is up 3.95% for SMA50 and it goes to 11.46% higher than SMA200.
The Vanguard Group, Inc. acquired 5.23 million shares of Heartland Express Inc. having value of about $80.15 million. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by The Vanguard Group, Inc. revealed that the firm now holds 83068.0 shares in the company valued at close to $1372283.36, or have control over 1.62% stake in the company. Heartland Express Inc. (NASDAQ: HTLD) currently have 78.94M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 56.80% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 43.76% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 72.79% and 12.54% of the stake respectively.
The stock has a current market capitalization of $1.30B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 0.62. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 9.42, while it has posted earnings per share of $1.75 in the same period. Its PEG reads 0.71 and has Quick Ratio of 1.70 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 0.55. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for HTLD, volatility over the week remained 1.87% while standing at 2.36% over the month.
Analysts are in expectations that Heartland Express Inc. (HTLD) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $0.3 in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $0.29 and it is $1.1 for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $0.27 which is $0.34 at the higher side of the target for the same. When we compare those targets with actual EPS, we find that company posted an EPS of $0.31 in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to rise by 14.50% while it is estimated to decrease by -1.44% in next year. EPS is likely to grow at an annualized rate of 13.30% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of 8.00% made by the stock over the past 5-years.
Analysts at 9 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the Heartland Express Inc. (HTLD)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Moderate Buy” and assign it a score of 2.80. Out of those 9 Wall Street analysts, 2 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 6 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 1 analyst recommended the stock as “Sell”.
Digging deeper we find that several firms have released their research notes about the support levels of the stock. Most recent of them is a note released by UBS on November 11, 2022 offering a Buy rating for the stock and assigned a target price range of between $17 and $18 to it. Coverage by Morgan Stanley stated Heartland Express Inc. (HTLD) stock as an Equal-weight in their note to investors on March 15, 2022, suggesting a price target of $16 for the stock. On February 18, 2022, JP Morgan Downgrade their recommendations, while on January 26, 2022, Barclays Downgrade their ratings for the stock with a price target of $15. Stock get an Overweight rating from JP Morgan on July 01, 2021.
