Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) Upgraded to Buy at Guggenheim

Guggenheim upgraded shares of Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) from a neutral rating to a buy rating in a report issued on Wednesday morning, MarketBeat.com reports. Guggenheim currently has $30.00 price target on the stock.

Several other equities research analysts have also recently issued reports on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their price target on shares of Sirius XM from $32.50 to $26.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday. Barrington Research restated an outperform rating and set a $47.50 target price on shares of Sirius XM in a research report on Monday, July 15th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft decreased their target price on shares of Sirius XM from $37.50 to $30.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, August 6th. StockNews.com initiated coverage on Sirius XM in a research report on Wednesday. They set a hold rating for the company. Finally, Evercore ISI raised shares of Sirius XM from an underperform rating to an in-line rating and dropped their price objective for the stock from $42.50 to $32.50 in a research report on Monday, June 24th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Sirius XM presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $36.91.

Sirius XM Price Performance

SIRI stock opened at $23.27 on Wednesday. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $31.82 and its 200-day simple moving average is $32.18. Sirius XM has a 12 month low of $22.73 and a 12 month high of $57.80. The firm has a market capitalization of $89.51 billion, a PE ratio of 70.52, a P/E/G ratio of 0.90 and a beta of 1.08.

Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, August 1st. The company reported $0.80 earnings per share for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of $0.80. Sirius XM had a negative return on equity of 52.15% and a net margin of 14.56%. The company had revenue of $2.18 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.20 billion. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that Sirius XM will post 3.14 earnings per share for the current year.

Sirius XM Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, August 26th. Investors of record on Friday, August 9th were paid a $0.266 dividend. This is a boost from Sirius XM’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.03. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, August 9th. This represents a $1.06 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.57%. Sirius XM’s payout ratio is 321.21%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Sirius XM

In other news, insider Scott Andrew Greenstein sold 144,723 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, August 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $31.60, for a total transaction of $4,573,246.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now directly owns 98,933 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,126,282.80. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. 0.79% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Sirius XM

A number of hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of SIRI. Van ECK Associates Corp bought a new position in Sirius XM during the 1st quarter worth approximately $2,036,000. Morningstar Investment Services LLC acquired a new position in Sirius XM in the fourth quarter worth $85,000. Assetmark Inc. increased its stake in Sirius XM by 1,320.9% during the fourth quarter. Assetmark Inc. now owns 39,076 shares of the company’s stock valued at $214,000 after purchasing an additional 36,326 shares during the last quarter. Jump Financial LLC raised its holdings in shares of Sirius XM by 25.2% during the fourth quarter. Jump Financial LLC now owns 42,385 shares of the company’s stock worth $232,000 after purchasing an additional 8,541 shares during the period. Finally, Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. lifted its position in shares of Sirius XM by 4.6% in the 4th quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 4,957,960 shares of the company’s stock worth $27,120,000 after buying an additional 218,211 shares during the last quarter. 10.69% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Sirius XM

Sirius XM Holdings Inc operates as an audio entertainment company in North America. It operates in two segments, Sirius XM, and Pandora and Off-platform. The company's Sirius XM segment provides music, sports, entertainment, comedy, talk, news, traffic and weather channels, and other content, as well as podcast and infotainment services on subscription fee basis; and live, curated, and exclusive and on demand programming services through satellite radio systems and streamed through applications for mobile and home devices, and other consumer electronic equipment.