Ashton Thomas Private Wealth LLC Takes $31,000 Position in AGNC Investment Corp. (NASDAQ:AGNC)

Ashton Thomas Private Wealth LLC bought a new stake in AGNC Investment Corp. (NASDAQ:AGNC) during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor bought 3,230 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock, valued at approximately $31,000.

Other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Norges Bank acquired a new position in shares of AGNC Investment in the 4th quarter valued at about $69,215,000. Foundations Investment Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of AGNC Investment in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $152,000. Brown Advisory Inc. bought a new stake in shares of AGNC Investment in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $99,000. Virtu Financial LLC bought a new stake in shares of AGNC Investment in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $717,000. Finally, Norden Group LLC grew its stake in shares of AGNC Investment by 985.9% in the 1st quarter. Norden Group LLC now owns 185,562 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock valued at $1,837,000 after buying an additional 168,473 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 38.28% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently commented on AGNC shares. Maxim Group cut AGNC Investment from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 24th. JMP Securities reaffirmed a “market perform” rating on shares of AGNC Investment in a research report on Wednesday, August 28th. Janney Montgomery Scott began coverage on AGNC Investment in a research report on Thursday, June 6th. They set a “buy” rating and a $10.50 target price for the company. Royal Bank of Canada upped their target price on AGNC Investment from $10.00 to $11.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, August 16th. Finally, StockNews.com cut AGNC Investment from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Sunday, September 8th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $10.13.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other AGNC Investment news, CFO Bernice Bell sold 5,000 shares of AGNC Investment stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $9.97, for a total transaction of $49,850.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 308,182 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,072,574.54. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. 0.52% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

AGNC Investment Trading Up 1.9 %

Shares of AGNC Investment stock opened at $10.55 on Tuesday. The company has a market cap of $7.67 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.59 and a beta of 1.47. AGNC Investment Corp. has a 1 year low of $6.81 and a 1 year high of $10.57. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $10.14 and its 200-day simple moving average is $9.79. The company has a current ratio of 0.27, a quick ratio of 0.27 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.01.

AGNC Investment (NASDAQ:AGNC) last issued its earnings results on Monday, July 22nd. The real estate investment trust reported $0.53 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.54 by ($0.01). The firm had revenue of $695.00 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $643.29 million. AGNC Investment had a return on equity of 26.21% and a net margin of 16.15%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 52.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.67 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that AGNC Investment Corp. will post 2.11 EPS for the current year.

AGNC Investment Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a aug 24 dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, September 11th. Investors of record on Friday, August 30th were given a $0.12 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Friday, August 30th. This represents a yield of 14.5%. AGNC Investment’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 158.24%.

AGNC Investment Company Profile

AGNC Investment Corp., formerly American Capital Agency Corp., is a real estate investment trust. The Company invests in agency residential mortgage-backed securities on a leveraged basis. Its investments consist of residential mortgage pass-through securities and collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) for which the principal and interest payments are guaranteed by a government-sponsored enterprise, such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), or by the United States Government agency, such as the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) (collectively, GSEs).