e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (NYSE: ELF): To Buy Or Not To Buy, That Is The Question

SSgA Funds Management, Inc. has recently announced that it has increased stake in e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (NYSE:ELF) by 4.11%. After grabbing 1.69 million shares, the institutional investor is now in possession of 66779.0 shares of the Consumer Defensive Company. The new investment brought the stake of investor firm to 3.17% having worth around $156.85 million. Moreover, Assenagon Asset Management SA increased its share by 0.91 million to have a control over 1.55 million shares. And Renaissance Technologies LLC raised its holdings to 0.27 million shares by acquiring 1.44 million shares or 2.70% of the stake.

e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (ELF) concluded trading on 05/24/23 at a closing price of $86.45, with 1.97 million shares of worth about $170.36 million changed hands on the day. Half year performance of the stock remained positive as price took a surge of 58.86% during that period and on Wednesday the price saw a gain of about 1.69%. Currently the company’s common shares owned by public are about 52.71M shares, out of which, 50.07M 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: 13 analysts are covering the ELF stock and their offered price forecasts bring an average price target of $96.18. Over the next 12 months, analysts forecasted that the stock’s price could jump as high as $114.00 and could fall to a lowest price of $70.00. The stock’s current price level is 10.97% above of average price target set by the analysts, while a rise to estimated low would result in loss of -23.5% for the stock. However, touching the estimated high of $114.00 would mean a gain of 24.17% 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 199 times over the past 12 months. They bought 1,023,018 shares in 38 of the transactions. In 161 selling transactions, insiders dumped 1,811,899 shares.

iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, and Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund are the top 3 mutual funds which are holding stakes in e.l.f. Beauty Inc. iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF is currently holding 3.67 million shares of worth totaling $340.76 million. The company recently came selling 4777.0 shares which brought its stake up to 6.89% of the company’s outstanding shares. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF bought 8530.0 shares, after which its hold over company’s outstanding shares expand to 2.96%, leaving 1.58 million shares with the mutual fund that have a worth of about $146.12 million. Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund, after selling 1.32 million shares, have now control over 2.49% of the stake in the company. It holds 324.0 shares of worth $122.86 million.

e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (NYSE: ELF) started trading at $84.39, below -$0.62 from concluding price of the previous day. However, the stock later moved at a day high price of 86.71, or with a gain of 1.69%. Stock saw a price change of -4.09% in past 5 days and over the past one month there was a price change of -6.43%. Year-to-date (YTD), ELF shares are showing a performance of 56.33% which increased to 298.57% when we look at its performance for past 12 months. Over the period of past 52 weeks, stock dropped to lowest price of $20.70 but also hit the highest price of $97.03 during that period. The average intraday trading volume for e.l.f. Beauty Inc. shares is 918.94K. The stock is currently trading -4.01% below its 20-day simple moving average (SMA20), while that difference is up 0.90% for SMA50 and it goes to 44.44% higher than SMA200.

SSgA Funds Management, Inc. acquired 1.69 million shares of e.l.f. Beauty Inc. having value of about $156.85 million. Data submitted at the U.S SEC by SSgA Funds Management, Inc. revealed that the firm now holds 66779.0 shares in the company valued at close to $5773044.55, or have control over 4.11% stake in the company. e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (NYSE: ELF) currently have 52.71M outstanding shares and institutions hold larger chunk of about 97.60% of that. Holding of mutual funds in the company is about 46.12% while other institutional holders and individual stake holders have control over 51.52% and 22.50% of the stake respectively.

The stock has a current market capitalization of $4.65B and its 3Y-monthly beta is at 1.51. PE ratio of stock for trailing 12 months is 101.35, while it has posted earnings per share of $0.85 in the same period. Its PEG reads 3.80 and has Quick Ratio of 2.10 while making debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18. Volatility of a stock is a metric used to know how much the price of that stock is under influence and for ELF, volatility over the week remained 3.07% while standing at 3.20% over the month.

Analysts are in expectations that e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (ELF) stock would likely to be making an EPS of $0.2 in the current quarter, while forecast for next quarter EPS is $0.46 and it is $1.64 for next year. For the current quarter EPS, analysts have given the company a lowest target $0.15 which is $0.27 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 $0.13 in the same quarter a year ago. Stock’s fiscal year EPS is expected to rise by 238.50% while it is estimated to increase by 14.78% in next year. EPS is likely to grow at an annualized rate of 26.70% for next 5-years, compared to annual growth of -1.70% made by the stock over the past 5-years.

Analysts at 13 brokerage firms have issued recommendations for the e.l.f. Beauty Inc. (ELF)’s stock and average of those rates the stock at a “Moderate Buy” and assign it a score of 2.10. Out of those 13 Wall Street analysts, 8 recommended a “Buy” rating, while 4 were in favor recommending the stock as a “Hold” and 0 analyst recommended the stock as “Sell”.