Assessing Whether Noble Corporation Plc (NYSE: NE) Is Over- Or Undervalued

After grabbing 7.67 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 7.67 million shares of the Energy Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 5.70% having worth around $319.57 million. Moreover, BlackRock Fund Advisors increased its share by 3.13 million to have a control over 5.76 million shares. And Odey Asset Management LLP raised its holdings to 2.22 million shares by acquiring 2.22 million shares or 1.65% of the stake.

Noble Corporation Plc (NE) concluded trading on 03/16/23 at a closing price of $37.63, with 2.43 million shares of worth about $91.34 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained positive as price took a surge of 9.55% during that period and on Thursday the price saw a gain of about 0.53%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 134.82M shares, out of which, 133.51M shares are available for trading.

A deeper look into what the analysts at Wall Street are thinking about the price target of this stock provides us with the following: 10 analysts are covering the NE stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $55.67. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $65.00 and could fall to a lowest price of $50.00. The stock’s current price level is 28.61% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in gain of 24.74% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $65.00 would mean a gain of 42.11% 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 119 times over the past 12 months. They bought 540,938 shares in 22 of the transactions. In 97 selling transactions, insiders dumped 12,282,722 shares.

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, iShares Russell 2000 ETF, and Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in Noble Corporation Plc Vanguard Total Stock Market Index is currently holding 3.21 million shares of worth totaling $134.01 million. The company recently came buying 22652.0 shares which brought its stake up to 2.39% of the company’s outstanding shares. iShares Russell 2000 ETF sold 5832.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares shrunk to 1.37%, leaving 1.84 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $76.88 million. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund, after buying 1.36 million shares, have now control over 1.01% of the stake in the company. It holds 7370.0 shares of worth $56.59 million.

Noble Corporation Plc (NYSE: NE) started trading at $36.93, below -$0.5 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 37.94, or with a gain of 0.53%. Stock saw a price change of -7.93% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of -13.55%. Year-to-date (YTD), NE shares are showing a performance of -0.21% which increased to 25.85% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $22.64 but also hit the highest price of $45.50 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for Noble Corporation Plc shares is 1.94 million. The stock is currently trading -8.93% below its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is down -6.86% for SMA50 and it goes to 9.12% higher than SMA200.

The Vanguard Group, Inc. acquired 7.67 million shares of Noble Corporation Plc having value of about $319.57 million. Noble Corporation Plc (NYSE: NE) currently have 134.82M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 49.40% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 32.07% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 9.55% and 20.66% of the stake respectively.

The stock has a current market capitalization of $5.05B. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 30.52, while it has posted earnings per share of $1.23 in the same period. It has Quick Ratio of 2.80 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for NE, volatility over the week remained 4.76% while standing at 4.84% over the month.

Analysts are in expectations that Noble Corporation Plc (NE) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $0.55 in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $0.45 and it is $3.22 for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $0.22 which is $0.79 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 -$0.35 in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to rise by 132.50% while it is estimated to increase by 99.62% in next year.

Analysts at 10 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the Noble Corporation Plc (NE)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Strong Buy” and assign it a score of 1.60. Out of those 10 Wall Street analysts, 8 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 1 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 The Benchmark Company on January 19, 2023 offering a Buy rating for the stock and assigned a target price of $50 to it. Coverage by BTIG Research stated Noble Corporation Plc (NE) stock as a Buy in their note to investors on June 01, 2022, suggesting a price target of $60 for the stock.