Vontobel Holding Ltd. Increases Position in The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC)

Vontobel Holding Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) by 10.9% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 2,618 shares of the company’s stock after acquiring an additional 257 shares during the quarter. Vontobel Holding Ltd.’s holdings in Toro were worth $210,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC grew its stake in Toro by 996,664.0% in the fourth quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 498,382 shares of the company’s stock worth $39,410,000 after purchasing an additional 498,332 shares in the last quarter. Nuance Investments LLC acquired a new position in Toro in the third quarter worth about $29,146,000. Worldquant Millennium Advisors LLC grew its stake in Toro by 71.2% in the third quarter. Worldquant Millennium Advisors LLC now owns 217,739 shares of the company’s stock worth $18,885,000 after purchasing an additional 90,538 shares in the last quarter. KBC Group NV grew its stake in Toro by 945.5% in the fourth quarter. KBC Group NV now owns 82,111 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,577,000 after purchasing an additional 74,257 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Benjamin Edwards Inc. grew its stake in Toro by 6,995.4% in the third quarter. Benjamin Edwards Inc. now owns 74,005 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,418,000 after purchasing an additional 72,962 shares in the last quarter. 87.95% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

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

Toro Stock Performance

Shares of TTC stock opened at $79.95 on Friday. The business has a 50 day moving average of $81.74 and a two-hundred day moving average of $84.34. The company has a market cap of $8.05 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.94 and a beta of 0.72. The company has a quick ratio of 0.74, a current ratio of 1.81 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59. The Toro Company has a 52 week low of $76.95 and a 52 week high of $100.93.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 earnings per share for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.95. Toro had a return on equity of 27.25% and a net margin of 9.14%. The company had revenue of $1.08 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.09 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $0.71 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts anticipate that The Toro Company will post 4.41 EPS for the current year.

Toro Increases Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, January 13th. Shareholders of record on Monday, December 23rd were given a dividend of $0.38 per share. This represents a $1.52 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.90%. This is a boost from Toro’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.36. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, December 23rd. Toro’s payout ratio is presently 37.91%.

Toro declared that its board has approved a stock repurchase plan on Tuesday, December 10th that authorizes the company to buyback 4,000,000 outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

Toro Company Profile

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.