The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LPLA). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Financial company by 6.35% to 7.45 million shares with purchase of 0.45 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 9.37% valued currently at $1.86 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.42 million to 3.8 million shares. And WCM Investment Management LLC has lifted its position by 6.76% or 0.16 million shares – to 2.56 million shares.
With over 2.84 million LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (LPLA) shares trading Tuesday and a closing price of $205.97 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $585.29 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -11.22% and its price on 03/14/23 gained nearly 1.61%. Currently, there are 79.48M common shares owned by the public and among those 78.11M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 129 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 75 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 247,673 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 54 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 253,183 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in LPL Financial Holdings Inc. are Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, Janus Henderson Enterprise Fund, and American Funds Growth Fund of Ame. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index owns 2.31 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $577.7 million. The company bought an additional 14623.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 2.91% of the shares outstanding. Janus Henderson Enterprise Fund sold -1.26 million shares to see its total holdings shrink to 1.67 million shares valued at over $417.47 million and representing 2.10% of the shares outstanding. American Funds Growth Fund of Ame now owns shares totaling to 1.37% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: LPLA) opened at $212.88, up $10.18 from a prior closing price of $202.70. However, the script later moved the day high at 217.47, up 1.61%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -18.92% and -6.82% over the past three months. LPLA shares are trading -4.72% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 31.35% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $151.53 and touched a high of $271.56 over the same period. LPLA has an average intraday trading volume of 734.87K shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by -16.15%, -12.58%, and -7.37% respectively.
Institutional ownership of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: LPLA) shares accounts for 98.47% of the company’s 79.48M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 47.56%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 49.99% and 29.73% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $16.97B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.94. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 19.77, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $10.42. The company has a PEG of 0.82 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 6.84% over the week and 3.47% over the month.
Analysts forecast that LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (LPLA) will achieve an EPS of $4.58 for the current quarter, $4.84 for the next quarter and $19.73 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $4.45 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $4.8. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.95 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 84.90%, and 4.05% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 24.26% over the next five years, compared to 33.00% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 15 brokerage firm advisors rate LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (LPLA) as a “Moderate Buy” at a consensus score of 2.10. Specifically, 9 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 6 of the 15 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the LPLA, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Morgan Stanley stated their Equal-Weight rating for the stock in a research note on November 30, 2022, with the firm’s price target at $281-$239. Credit Suisse was of a view on November 01, 2022 that the stock is Outperform, while Credit Suisse gave the stock Neutral rating on October 19, 2022, issuing a price target of $262. Citigroup on their part issued Buy rating on October 12, 2022.
