The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Paychex Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYX). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Industrials company by 1.69% to 29.39 million shares with purchase of 0.49 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 8.15% valued currently at $3.24 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.41 million to 20.95 million shares. And Geode Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 1.35% or 0.11 million shares – to 7.92 million shares.
With over 1.91 million Paychex Inc. (PAYX) shares trading Monday and a closing price of $108.33 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $206.54 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -14.59% and its price on 03/13/23 gained nearly 0.46%. Currently, there are 360.50M common shares owned by the public and among those 321.66M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 60 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 113,442 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 36 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 183,230 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Paychex Inc. are Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and American Mutual Fund. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index owns 9.93 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $1.1 billion. The company bought an additional 66335.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 2.76% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 17611.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 7.43 million shares valued at over $820.5 million and representing 2.06% of the shares outstanding. American Mutual Fund bought 0.14 million shares to bring its total holdings to over 5.4 million shares at a value of $596.21 million. American Mutual Fund now owns shares totaling to 1.50% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Paychex Inc. (NASDAQ: PAYX) opened at $107.28, down -$0.55 from a prior closing price of $107.83. However, the script later moved the day high at 110.51, up 0.46%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -4.24% and -9.85% over the past three months. PAYX shares are trading -6.26% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -11.34% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $105.66 and touched a high of $141.92 over the same period. PAYX has an average intraday trading volume of 1.68 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 -3.56%, -5.87%, and -9.10% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Paychex Inc. (NASDAQ: PAYX) shares accounts for 73.20% of the company’s 360.50M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 36.15%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 37.59% and 11.96% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $40.22B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.97. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 26.80, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $4.04. The company has a PEG of 3.46 and a Quick Ratio of 1.30 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.25. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.33% over the week and 1.78% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Paychex Inc. (PAYX) will achieve an EPS of $1.24 for the current quarter, $0.98 for the next quarter and $4.53 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $1.17 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $1.29. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.15 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 26.60%, and 6.86% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 7.74% over the next five years, compared to 11.00% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the PAYX, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Barclays stated their Underweight rating for the stock in a research note on January 17, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $110. BofA Securities coverage for the Paychex Inc. (PAYX) stock in a research note released on March 09, 2022 offered a Neutral rating with a price target of $125. Cowen was of a view on January 11, 2022 that the stock is Outperform, while Citigroup gave the stock Neutral rating on October 06, 2021, issuing a price target of $125. Citigroup on their part issued Neutral rating on October 05, 2021.
