BlackRock Fund Advisors recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Walker & Dunlop Inc. (NYSE:WD). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Financial company by 0.52% to 4.39 million shares with purchase of 22662.0 shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 13.30% valued currently at $344.57 million. In addition, Fidelity Management & Research Co raised its holdings by 6268.0 to 2.11 million shares.
With over 0.15 million Walker & Dunlop Inc. (WD) shares trading Friday and a closing price of $92.87 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $14.31 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -11.96% and its price on 01/20/23 gained nearly 0.56%. Currently, there are 32.29M common shares owned by the public and among those 30.53M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 45 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 24 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 227,620 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 21 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 143,935 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Walker & Dunlop Inc. are iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF, Janus Henderson Triton Fund, and Vanguard Total Stock Market Index. iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF owns 2.27 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $178.26 million. The company sold 1512.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 6.88% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index bought 5477.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 0.95 million shares at a value of $74.92 million. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index now owns shares totaling to 2.89% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Walker & Dunlop Inc. (NYSE: WD) opened at $93.14, up $0.79 from a prior closing price of $92.35. However, the script later moved the day high at 93.14, up 0.56%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 1.98% and 7.89% over the past three months. WD shares are trading 18.34% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -33.23% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $75.33 and touched a high of $145.00 over the same period. WD has an average intraday trading volume of 172.38K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 11.16%, 11.26%, and -5.13% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Walker & Dunlop Inc. (NYSE: WD) shares accounts for 74.80% of the company’s 32.29M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 19.92%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 54.53% and 18.57% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $3.05B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.30. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 12.31, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $7.54. The company has a PEG of 1.23 and the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.00. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 3.07% over the week and 3.10% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Walker & Dunlop Inc. (WD) will achieve an EPS of $1.99 for the current quarter, $2.57 for the next quarter and $9.47 for 2023. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $1.72 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $2.32. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $2.21 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 6.00%, and 9.40% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 10.00% over the next five years, compared to 17.90% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 5 brokerage firm advisors rate Walker & Dunlop Inc. (WD) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.40. Specifically, 5 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 0 of the 5 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Jefferies coverage for the Walker & Dunlop Inc. (WD) stock in a research note released on November 08, 2021 offered a Buy rating with a price target of $190. JMP Securities on their part issued Mkt Outperform rating on June 09, 2020.
