Capital Research & Management Co recently announced the acquisition of new stake in CenterPoint Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNP). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Utilities company by 5.98% to 77.89 million shares with purchase of 4.39 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 12.37% valued currently at $2.17 billion. In addition, The Vanguard Group, Inc. raised its holdings by 0.58 million to 73.79 million shares. And BlackRock Fund Advisors has lifted its position by 4.03% or 1.5 million shares – to 38.63 million shares.
With over 2.28 million CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP) shares trading Tuesday and a closing price of $28.67 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $65.27 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -6.03% and its price on 03/28/23 gained nearly 0.60%. Currently, there are 629.00M common shares owned by the public and among those 628.70M shares have been available to trade.
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An analysis of what Wall Street brokers have to say about the expected price targets for this stock gives us this picture: 15 analysts who have offered their price forecasts for CNP have a consensus price objective of $31.75. The analysts have set the share’s price value over the next 12 months at a high of $33.00 and a low of $28.00. The average price target is 9.47% above its recent price level and a downside to the estimated low will see the stock lose -2.39% over that period. But an upside of 13.12% will see the stock hit the forecast high price target while median target price for the stock is $32.00.
Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 40 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 1,193,238 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 16 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 505,810 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in CenterPoint Energy Inc. are American Mutual Fund, American Balanced Fund, and Vanguard Total Stock Market Index. American Mutual Fund owns 41.8 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $1.16 billion. The company bought an additional 2.76 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 6.64% of the shares outstanding. American Balanced Fund bought 1.0 million shares to see its total holdings expand to 25.47 million shares valued at over $708.55 million and representing 4.04% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index bought 92193.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 19.35 million shares at a value of $538.34 million. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index now owns shares totaling to 3.07% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of CenterPoint Energy Inc. (NYSE: CNP) opened at $28.42, down -$0.08 from a prior closing price of $28.50. However, the script later moved the day high at 28.95, up 0.60%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 1.52% and -6.58% over the past three months. CNP shares are trading -4.40% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -5.72% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $25.03 and touched a high of $33.50 over the same period. CNP has an average intraday trading volume of 3.96 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 1.50%, -1.33%, and -3.66% respectively.
Institutional ownership of CenterPoint Energy Inc. (NYSE: CNP) shares accounts for 93.10% of the company’s 629.00M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 28.18%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 64.16% and 1.15% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $17.41B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.88. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 17.95, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $1.60. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.57% over the week and 2.63% over the month.
Analysts forecast that CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP) will achieve an EPS of $0.29 for the current quarter, $0.56 for the next quarter and $1.49 for 2023. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.28 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.3. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.36 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 69.80%, and 8.31% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of -1.07% over the next five years, compared to 0.40% 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 CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP) as a “Moderate Buy” at a consensus score of 2.00. Specifically, 11 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 3 of the 15 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
Looking at the support for the CNP, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Guggenheim stated their Neutral rating for the stock in a research note on January 23, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $31-$32. Credit Suisse was of a view on April 26, 2022 that the stock is Outperform, while Morgan Stanley gave the stock Overweight rating on February 17, 2022, issuing a price target of $30. Goldman on their part issued Neutral rating on January 13, 2022.
