Barclays PLC Has $146,000 Holdings in Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS)

Barclays PLC cut its holdings in shares of Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) by 83.7% during the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 3,210 shares of the utilities provider’s stock after selling 16,471 shares during the period. Barclays PLC’s holdings in Fortis were worth $146,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in FTS. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP raised its position in shares of Fortis by 4.5% in the 2nd quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 489,343 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $19,006,000 after acquiring an additional 21,059 shares during the period. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. raised its position in shares of Fortis by 5.8% in the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,352,485 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $61,516,000 after acquiring an additional 73,682 shares during the period. Intact Investment Management Inc. raised its position in shares of Fortis by 163.8% in the 3rd quarter. Intact Investment Management Inc. now owns 227,700 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $10,347,000 after acquiring an additional 141,400 shares during the period. Citigroup Inc. increased its stake in Fortis by 11.3% during the 3rd quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 153,325 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $6,974,000 after purchasing an additional 15,605 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Code Waechter LLC bought a new stake in Fortis during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $838,000. 57.77% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, Raymond James cut Fortis from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 6th.

Fortis Price Performance

Shares of FTS opened at $42.12 on Thursday. The stock has a market capitalization of $21.03 billion, a P/E ratio of 17.70, a P/E/G ratio of 3.76 and a beta of 0.50. Fortis Inc. has a twelve month low of $36.86 and a twelve month high of $46.06. The company has a 50 day moving average of $42.84 and a 200-day moving average of $43.18. The company has a quick ratio of 0.63, a current ratio of 0.74 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32.

Fortis (NYSE:FTS) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, November 5th. The utilities provider reported $0.85 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.59 by $0.26. The company had revenue of $2.03 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.01 billion. Fortis had a net margin of 14.06% and a return on equity of 7.01%. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.63 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Fortis Inc. will post 2.29 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Fortis Cuts Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Saturday, March 1st. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, February 18th will be issued a dividend of $0.4382 per share. This represents a $1.75 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 4.16%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, February 18th. Fortis’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 79.41%.

Fortis Company Profile

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 447,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 103,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,408 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.