Investors Purchase Large Volume of Cleveland-Cliffs Call Options (NYSE:CLF)

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) saw some unusual options trading on Wednesday. Stock investors bought 82,320 call options on the company. This represents an increase of 126% compared to the typical daily volume of 36,495 call options.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms recently weighed in on CLF. Citigroup decreased their target price on shares of Cleveland-Cliffs from $18.00 to $12.50 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, September 10th. Morgan Stanley decreased their price objective on Cleveland-Cliffs from $15.00 to $13.50 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, September 18th. Finally, Seaport Res Ptn raised Cleveland-Cliffs from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 27th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating, two have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Cleveland-Cliffs has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $17.56.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cleveland-Cliffs

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its stake in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 54.7% during the second quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 15,906,597 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $244,794,000 after buying an additional 5,621,797 shares during the last quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC grew its position in Cleveland-Cliffs by 49.9% during the 2nd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 6,093,632 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $93,172,000 after acquiring an additional 2,027,757 shares during the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp increased its holdings in Cleveland-Cliffs by 23.6% in the 2nd quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 5,597,662 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $86,148,000 after purchasing an additional 1,069,907 shares in the last quarter. Castle Hook Partners LP raised its position in Cleveland-Cliffs by 13.8% in the first quarter. Castle Hook Partners LP now owns 3,374,716 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $76,741,000 after purchasing an additional 410,182 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Drexel Morgan & Co. boosted its stake in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 3.8% during the third quarter. Drexel Morgan & Co. now owns 3,200,395 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $40,869,000 after purchasing an additional 116,400 shares in the last quarter. 67.68% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Cleveland-Cliffs Stock Performance

CLF opened at $13.94 on Thursday. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $12.63 and a 200 day simple moving average of $14.58. The company has a market capitalization of $6.52 billion, a PE ratio of -14.37 and a beta of 1.97. Cleveland-Cliffs has a 1 year low of $10.21 and a 1 year high of $22.97. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 1.87 and a quick ratio of 0.60.

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, November 4th. The mining company reported ($0.33) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.31) by ($0.02). The company had revenue of $4.57 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.72 billion. Cleveland-Cliffs had a net margin of 0.21% and a return on equity of 4.94%. The company’s quarterly revenue was down 18.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.54 earnings per share. Research analysts expect that Cleveland-Cliffs will post -0.37 EPS for the current year.

Cleveland-Cliffs Company Profile

Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest flat-rolled steel company and the largest iron ore pellet producer in North America. The company is vertically integrated from mining through iron making, steelmaking, rolling, finishing and downstream with hot and cold stamping of steel parts and components. The company was formerly known as Cliffs Natural Resources Inc and changed its name to Cleveland-Cliffs Inc in August 2017.