The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE:GPK). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Consumer Cyclical company by 7.30% to 31.37 million shares with purchase of 2.13 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 10.21% valued currently at $773.59 million. In addition, Wellington Management Co. LLP raised its holdings by 0.75 million to 12.72 million shares. And BlackRock Fund Advisors has lifted its position by 2.75% or 0.32 million shares – to 11.94 million shares.
With over 2.97 million Graphic Packaging Holding Company (GPK) shares trading Monday and a closing price of $25.65 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $76.14 million. The shares have shown a positive half year performance of 15.13% and its price on 05/22/23 lost nearly -0.43%. Currently, there are 308.60M common shares owned by the public and among those 303.65M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 37 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 19 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,014,829 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 18 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 594,122 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Graphic Packaging Holding Company are Undiscovered Managers Behavioral, Government Pension Fund – Global, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. Undiscovered Managers Behavioral owns 10.49 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $258.78 million. The company sold -0.81 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.42% of the shares outstanding. Government Pension Fund – Global sold -4.24 million shares to see its total holdings shrink to 9.73 million shares valued at over $239.87 million and representing 3.17% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF bought 37020.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 9.5 million shares at a value of $234.24 million. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF now owns shares totaling to 3.09% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE: GPK) opened at $25.67, down -$0.09 from a prior closing price of $25.76. However, the script later moved the day high at 25.84, down -0.43%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -0.70% and 11.09% over the past three months. GPK shares are trading 15.28% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 25.80% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $19.08 and touched a high of $26.16 over the same period. GPK has an average intraday trading volume of 2.93 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 1.48%, 3.25%, and 11.23% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE: GPK) shares accounts for 94.10% of the company’s 308.60M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 42.76%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 55.61% and 39.94% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $7.84B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.98. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 12.76, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $2.01. The company has a PEG of 0.74 and a Quick Ratio of 0.60 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 2.39. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 1.42% over the week and 2.09% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Graphic Packaging Holding Company (GPK) will achieve an EPS of $0.76 for the current quarter, $0.78 for the next quarter and $3.09 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.7 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.8. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.6 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 146.30%, and 3.03% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 17.25% over the next five years, compared to 26.20% over the past 5-year period.
If you are looking to buy this stock, then you may note that the average analyst recommendation by 13 brokerage firm advisors rate Graphic Packaging Holding Company (GPK) as a “Strong Buy” at a consensus score of 1.80. Specifically, 11 Wall Street analysts polled rate the stock as a buy, while 1 of the 13 advise that investors “hold,” and 0 rated it as a “Sell.”
