AJ Bell (LON:AJB) Shares Down 1.8% – What’s Next?

AJ Bell plc (LON:AJB)’s stock price dropped 1.8% on Wednesday . The stock traded as low as GBX 425 ($5.35) and last traded at GBX 426.50 ($5.37). Approximately 530,118 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 73% from the average daily volume of 1,935,266 shares. The stock had previously closed at GBX 434.50 ($5.47).

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several brokerages have commented on AJB. Jefferies Financial Group reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a GBX 565 ($7.11) price target on shares of AJ Bell in a research note on Friday, December 6th. Shore Capital restated a “hold” rating on shares of AJ Bell in a research report on Friday, December 6th. Finally, Citigroup lowered shares of AJ Bell to a “sell” rating and lowered their price objective for the company from GBX 450 ($5.66) to GBX 390 ($4.91) in a research report on Tuesday, January 7th.

AJ Bell Stock Performance

The company has a market cap of £1.76 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.81, a PEG ratio of 5.73 and a beta of 0.99. The company has a 50 day moving average price of GBX 445.23 and a 200-day moving average price of GBX 449.57. The company has a quick ratio of 7.16, a current ratio of 3.63 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 6.46.

AJ Bell (LON:AJB) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, December 5th. The company reported GBX 20.46 ($0.26) EPS for the quarter. AJ Bell had a return on equity of 42.30% and a net margin of 33.14%. Equities analysts expect that AJ Bell plc will post 23.8118812 EPS for the current fiscal year.

AJ Bell Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 7th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, January 9th were issued a dividend of GBX 8.25 ($0.10) per share. This is a positive change from AJ Bell’s previous dividend of $4.25. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, January 9th. This represents a dividend yield of 1.66%. AJ Bell’s dividend payout ratio is currently 61.37%.

Insider Activity at AJ Bell

In other news, insider Peter Birch sold 25,853 shares of AJ Bell stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, December 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of GBX 459 ($5.78), for a total transaction of £118,665.27 ($149,320.84). 29.60% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

About AJ Bell

Established in 1995, AJ Bell is one of the largest investment platforms in the UK, operating at scale in both the advised and direct-to-consumer markets.

Our purpose is to help people invest by providing them with easy access to Pensions, ISAs and General investment accounts, great customer service and competitive charges.

Our two core platform propositions are AJ Bell in the D2C market and AJ Bell Investcentre in the advised market, which both provide access to a broad investment range including shares and other instruments traded on the major stock exchanges around the world, as well as all mainstream collective investments available in the UK and our own range of AJ Bell funds.