Investors Purchase High Volume of Toro Put Options (NYSE:TTC)

The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) was the recipient of some unusual options trading activity on Wednesday. Stock investors purchased 1,176 put options on the company. This is an increase of approximately 1,709% compared to the average daily volume of 65 put options.

Institutional Trading of Toro

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Speece Thorson Capital Group Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Toro by 24.5% during the third quarter. Speece Thorson Capital Group Inc. now owns 144,438 shares of the company’s stock worth $12,527,000 after purchasing an additional 28,453 shares during the last quarter. PEAK6 Investments LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Toro during the 3rd quarter worth about $1,248,000. Benjamin Edwards Inc. lifted its position in shares of Toro by 6,995.4% during the 3rd quarter. Benjamin Edwards Inc. now owns 74,005 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,418,000 after buying an additional 72,962 shares in the last quarter. Raymond James & Associates lifted its holdings in Toro by 5.7% during the third quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 278,700 shares of the company’s stock valued at $24,172,000 after purchasing an additional 14,950 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Eagle Asset Management Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Toro during the third quarter worth about $1,261,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 87.95% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Separately, Raymond James reduced their target price on shares of Toro from $100.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Friday, December 20th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $93.75.

Toro Stock Up 1.1 %

Shares of NYSE:TTC opened at $79.23 on Thursday. Toro has a 1 year low of $77.15 and a 1 year high of $100.93. The firm has a market capitalization of $8.02 billion, a PE ratio of 20.80 and a beta of 0.72. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $83.53 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $86.84. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a current ratio of 1.94 and a quick ratio of 0.85.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 EPS for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of $0.95. Toro had a return on equity of 25.94% and a net margin of 8.89%. The company had revenue of $1.08 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.09 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.71 EPS. Toro’s quarterly revenue was up 9.4% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities analysts predict that Toro will post 4.16 EPS for the current year.

Toro Increases Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, January 13th. Investors of record on Monday, December 23rd will be given a dividend of $0.38 per share. This is a positive change from Toro’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.36. This represents a $1.52 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.92%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, December 23rd. Toro’s dividend payout ratio is currently 37.91%.

Toro announced that its board has approved a stock buyback program on Tuesday, December 10th that authorizes the company to buyback 4,000,000 shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are typically a sign that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

About Toro

The Toro Company designs, manufactures, markets, and sells professional turf maintenance equipment and services. It operates through two segments: Professional and Residential. The Professional segment offers turf and landscape equipment products, including sports fields and grounds mowing and maintenance equipment, golf course mowing and maintenance equipment, landscape contractor mowing equipment, landscape creation and renovation equipment, and other maintenance equipment; rental, specialty, and underground construction equipment, such as horizontal directional drills, walk and ride trenchers, stand-on skid steers, vacuum excavators, stump grinders, turf renovation products, asset locators, pipe rehabilitation solutions, materials handling equipment, and other after-market tools; and snow and ice management equipment, such as snowplows, as well as stand-on snow and ice removal equipment, such as snowplow, snow brush, and snow thrower attachments, salt and sand spreaders, and related parts and accessories for light and medium duty trucks, utility task vehicles, skid steers, and front-end loaders.