BlackRock Fund Advisors has recently announced that it has increased stake in OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) by 3.95%. After grabbing 4.56 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 0.17 million shares of the Financial Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 7.72% having worth around $96.97 million. Moreover, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its share by 0.16 million to have a control over 3.32 million shares. And Hood River Capital Management LLC raised its holdings to 29358.0 shares by acquiring 1.51 million shares or 2.55% of the stake.
OceanFirst Financial Corp. (OCFC) concluded trading on 01/18/23 at a closing price of $21.01, with 0.22 million shares of worth about $4.6 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained positive as price took a surge of 6.38% during that period and on Wednesday the price saw a loss of about -4.06%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 58.68M shares, out of which, 57.44M 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: 7 analysts are covering the OCFC stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $26.33. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $29.00 and could fall to a lowest price of $24.00. The stock’s current price level is 20.21% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in gain of 12.46% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $29.00 would mean a gain of 27.55% 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 45 times over the past 12 months. They bought 227,691 shares in 27 of the transactions. In 18 selling transactions, insiders dumped 147,981 shares.
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, iShares Russell 2000 ETF, and BlackRock Advantage Small Cap Cor are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in OceanFirst Financial Corp. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index is currently holding 1.64 million shares of worth totaling $34.89 million. The company recently came buying 0.0 shares which brought its stake up to 2.78% of the company’s outstanding shares. iShares Russell 2000 ETF sold 14030.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares shrunk to 2.28%, leaving 1.35 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $28.61 million. BlackRock Advantage Small Cap Cor, after selling 0.88 million shares, have now control over 1.48% of the stake in the company. It holds 5919.0 shares of worth $18.6 million.
OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: OCFC) started trading at $21.82, below -$0.08 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 21.82, or with a loss of -4.06%. Stock saw a price change of -3.76% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of -0.71%. Year-to-date (YTD), OCFC shares are showing a performance of -1.13% which decreased to -12.60% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $18.24 but also hit the highest price of $24.25 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for OceanFirst Financial Corp. shares is 243.48K. The stock is currently trading -2.31% below its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is down -5.93% for SMA50 and it goes to 2.97% higher than SMA200.
BlackRock Fund Advisors acquired 4.56 million shares of OceanFirst Financial Corp. having value of about $96.97 million. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by BlackRock Fund Advisors revealed that the firm now holds 0.17 million shares in the company valued at close to $3645634.19, or have control over 3.95% stake in the company. OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: OCFC) currently have 58.68M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 72.40% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 29.15% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 41.62% and 11.15% of the stake respectively.
The stock has a current market capitalization of $1.24B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 0.89. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 11.06, while it has posted earnings per share of $1.90 in the same period. Its PEG reads 1.11 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for OCFC, volatility over the week remained 2.23% while standing at 1.95% over the month.
Analysts are in expectations that OceanFirst Financial Corp. (OCFC) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $0.63 in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $0.65 and it is $2.77 for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $0.58 which is $0.68 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 $0.48 in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to rise by 74.50% while it is estimated to increase by 13.09% in next year. EPS is likely to shrink at an annualized rate of 10.00% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of 12.70% made by the stock over the past 5-years.
Analysts at 7 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the OceanFirst Financial Corp. (OCFC)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Moderate Buy” and assign it a score of 2.30. Out of those 7 Wall Street analysts, 4 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 3 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 0 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 Piper Sandler on December 12, 2022 offering a Neutral rating for the stock and assigned a target price of $25 to it. On August 06, 2021, Piper Sandler Upgrade their recommendations, while on August 04, 2021, Stephens Upgrade their ratings for the stock with a price target of $23.50. Stock get an Outperform rating from Keefe Bruyette on July 30, 2021.
