Stock Traders Buy Large Volume of Call Options on Plains All American Pipeline (NYSE:PAA)

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (NYSE:PAA) was the recipient of some unusual options trading activity on Tuesday. Investors bought 8,315 call options on the company. This is an increase of approximately 40% compared to the average daily volume of 5,953 call options.

Analyst Ratings Changes

PAA has been the topic of several analyst reports. Wolfe Research raised Plains All American Pipeline from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $22.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Friday, January 10th. Royal Bank of Canada reissued a “sector perform” rating and set a $19.00 target price on shares of Plains All American Pipeline in a research report on Friday, November 15th. Wells Fargo & Company downgraded Plains All American Pipeline from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and lowered their price target for the stock from $22.00 to $20.00 in a research report on Wednesday, December 18th. Barclays lifted their price objective on shares of Plains All American Pipeline from $18.00 to $19.00 and gave the stock an “underweight” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 16th. Finally, Raymond James increased their target price on shares of Plains All American Pipeline from $23.00 to $24.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, January 28th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have issued a hold rating, six have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $20.21.

Plains All American Pipeline Price Performance

Plains All American Pipeline stock opened at $19.30 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.64, a current ratio of 1.01 and a quick ratio of 0.92. The stock has a market cap of $13.58 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.44 and a beta of 1.65. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $19.40 and a two-hundred day moving average of $18.18. Plains All American Pipeline has a 1 year low of $16.21 and a 1 year high of $21.00.

Plains All American Pipeline Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Friday, January 31st were issued a $0.38 dividend. This is a positive change from Plains All American Pipeline’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.32. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, January 31st. This represents a $1.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 7.88%. Plains All American Pipeline’s payout ratio is presently 208.22%.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Waverly Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Plains All American Pipeline by 2.5% in the 4th quarter. Waverly Advisors LLC now owns 51,565 shares of the pipeline company’s stock worth $881,000 after buying an additional 1,237 shares during the period. Nuveen Asset Management LLC lifted its stake in Plains All American Pipeline by 116.7% in the fourth quarter. Nuveen Asset Management LLC now owns 245,345 shares of the pipeline company’s stock worth $4,190,000 after acquiring an additional 132,142 shares during the period. Morse Asset Management Inc lifted its stake in Plains All American Pipeline by 2.5% in the fourth quarter. Morse Asset Management Inc now owns 46,500 shares of the pipeline company’s stock worth $794,000 after acquiring an additional 1,150 shares during the period. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. grew its holdings in Plains All American Pipeline by 8.6% during the 4th quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 15,297,594 shares of the pipeline company’s stock worth $261,283,000 after acquiring an additional 1,211,286 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Eagle Global Advisors LLC increased its position in Plains All American Pipeline by 8.3% during the 4th quarter. Eagle Global Advisors LLC now owns 4,666,185 shares of the pipeline company’s stock valued at $79,698,000 after purchasing an additional 358,350 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 41.78% of the company’s stock.

Plains All American Pipeline Company Profile

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P., through its subsidiaries, engages in the pipeline transportation, terminaling, storage, and gathering of crude oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) in the United States and Canada. The company operates through two segments, Crude Oil and NGL. The Crude Oil segment offers gathering and transporting crude oil through pipelines, gathering systems, trucks, and on barges or railcars.