Rheos Capital Works Inc. Purchases New Shares in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Rheos Capital Works Inc. acquired a new position in shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 89,000 shares of the iPhone maker’s stock, valued at approximately $20,737,000.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in AAPL. Verus Financial Partners Inc. boosted its position in shares of Apple by 0.3% in the 2nd quarter. Verus Financial Partners Inc. now owns 16,929 shares of the iPhone maker’s stock worth $3,566,000 after buying an additional 48 shares in the last quarter. Brown Financial Advisory raised its position in Apple by 3.8% during the second quarter. Brown Financial Advisory now owns 1,364 shares of the iPhone maker’s stock worth $287,000 after acquiring an additional 50 shares during the last quarter. Core Wealth Management Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Apple by 1.7% in the second quarter. Core Wealth Management Inc. now owns 2,968 shares of the iPhone maker’s stock valued at $625,000 after purchasing an additional 50 shares in the last quarter. Lowery Thomas LLC grew its position in shares of Apple by 0.7% in the second quarter. Lowery Thomas LLC now owns 7,607 shares of the iPhone maker’s stock valued at $1,602,000 after purchasing an additional 50 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Klein Pavlis & Peasley Financial Inc. raised its position in shares of Apple by 1.1% during the 2nd quarter. Klein Pavlis & Peasley Financial Inc. now owns 4,505 shares of the iPhone maker’s stock worth $949,000 after purchasing an additional 51 shares during the last quarter. 60.41% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have weighed in on AAPL shares. Wedbush reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $300.00 price target on shares of Apple in a research report on Friday, November 29th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reiterated an “overweight” rating and set a $265.00 price objective on shares of Apple in a research report on Tuesday, September 10th. Tigress Financial upped their target price on shares of Apple from $245.00 to $295.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, August 28th. UBS Group reissued a “neutral” rating and issued a $236.00 price objective on shares of Apple in a research report on Monday, December 2nd. Finally, Piper Sandler restated a “neutral” rating and set a $225.00 target price on shares of Apple in a research report on Wednesday, October 9th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have given a hold rating, twenty-two have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Apple presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $235.68.

Apple Trading Down 0.1 %

NASDAQ:AAPL opened at $242.84 on Monday. The stock has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 39.94, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.38 and a beta of 1.23. Apple Inc. has a one year low of $164.07 and a one year high of $244.63. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.51, a quick ratio of 0.83 and a current ratio of 0.87. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $230.53 and its 200 day simple moving average is $221.83.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, October 31st. The iPhone maker reported $1.64 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.60 by $0.04. Apple had a return on equity of 152.94% and a net margin of 23.97%. The company had revenue of $94.93 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $94.52 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $1.46 EPS. Apple’s quarterly revenue was up 6.1% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Apple Inc. will post 7.43 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Apple Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, November 14th. Shareholders of record on Monday, November 11th were issued a dividend of $0.25 per share. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.41%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, November 8th. Apple’s dividend payout ratio is currently 16.45%.

Insider Transactions at Apple

In other Apple news, insider Chris Kondo sold 4,130 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $228.87, for a total transaction of $945,233.10. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 15,419 shares in the company, valued at $3,528,946.53. The trade was a 21.13 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CFO Luca Maestri sold 59,305 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, October 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $226.52, for a total transaction of $13,433,768.60. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 107,788 shares in the company, valued at approximately $24,416,137.76. The trade was a 35.49 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 408,170 shares of company stock valued at $92,007,745. Insiders own 0.06% of the company’s stock.

Apple Company Profile

Apple Inc designs, manufactures, and markets smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables, and accessories worldwide. The company offers iPhone, a line of smartphones; Mac, a line of personal computers; iPad, a line of multi-purpose tablets; and wearables, home, and accessories comprising AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, and HomePod.