Ball (NYSE:BALL) to Buyback 40,000,000 Outstanding Shares

Ball (NYSE:BALL) announced that its board has initiated a share repurchase plan on Wednesday, April 24th, RTT News reports. The company plans to repurchase 40,000,000 outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the company to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are generally a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently weighed in on BALL. TheStreet upgraded Ball from a “c+” rating to a “b-” rating in a research note on Friday, March 8th. Truist Financial restated a “hold” rating and set a $60.00 target price on shares of Ball in a research note on Friday, April 12th. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their target price on Ball from $52.00 to $62.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Monday, March 18th. Citigroup assumed coverage on Ball in a research note on Wednesday, March 27th. They set a “neutral” rating and a $70.00 target price for the company. Finally, Barclays restated an “equal weight” rating and set a $71.00 target price (up previously from $66.00) on shares of Ball in a research note on Thursday, April 4th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have given a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $65.58.

Ball Stock Performance

NYSE BALL traded down $0.32 on Wednesday, reaching $65.18. The stock had a trading volume of 1,901,847 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,824,852. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.96, a quick ratio of 0.54 and a current ratio of 0.79. Ball has a 12-month low of $42.81 and a 12-month high of $67.97. The business’s 50-day moving average price is $64.90 and its 200 day moving average price is $57.73. The stock has a market cap of $20.57 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.10, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.23 and a beta of 0.89.

Ball (NYSE:BALL) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 1st. The company reported $0.78 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.77 by $0.01. The business had revenue of $3.40 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.56 billion. Ball had a return on equity of 23.81% and a net margin of 5.04%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 4.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $0.44 earnings per share. As a group, equities analysts expect that Ball will post 3.09 earnings per share for the current year.

Ball Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, June 17th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 3rd will be issued a $0.20 dividend. This represents a $0.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.23%. Ball’s payout ratio is currently 35.71%.

Insider Activity

In related news, insider Daniel William Fisher bought 3,869 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, March 14th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $64.56 per share, with a total value of $249,782.64. Following the completion of the acquisition, the insider now owns 111,866 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,222,068.96. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link. Corporate insiders own 0.81% of the company’s stock.

Ball Company Profile

Ball Corporation supplies aluminum packaging products for the beverage, personal care, and household products industries in the United States, Brazil, and internationally. The company manufactures and sells aluminum beverage containers to fillers of carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, and other beverages.