Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) Downgraded by Zacks Research to “Strong Sell”

Zacks Research lowered shares of Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) from a hold rating to a strong sell rating in a research note released on Monday,Zacks.com reports.

A number of other analysts have also recently issued reports on the stock. Robert W. Baird set a $53.00 target price on shares of Qiagen in a research note on Friday, February 6th. Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of Qiagen from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, February 21st. UBS Group set a $52.00 price objective on shares of Qiagen in a research note on Monday, February 9th. Weiss Ratings reissued a “hold (c)” rating on shares of Qiagen in a research report on Monday, December 29th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus set a $50.00 target price on Qiagen and gave the company a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, February 6th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, eight have assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $55.20.

Qiagen Price Performance

QGEN opened at $43.01 on Monday. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $49.70 and a 200 day moving average price of $49.05. The company has a current ratio of 3.90, a quick ratio of 3.31 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.44. Qiagen has a 1 year low of $40.14 and a 1 year high of $57.81. The stock has a market cap of $9.08 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.33, a PEG ratio of 2.11 and a beta of 0.70.

Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 5th. The company reported $0.62 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.61 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $540.42 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $528.53 million. Qiagen had a return on equity of 14.56% and a net margin of 20.33%.The business’s quarterly revenue was up 3.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.61 EPS. Analysts forecast that Qiagen will post 2.26 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of Qiagen

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA boosted its holdings in shares of Qiagen by 1.1% during the 4th quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA now owns 24,205,881 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,088,538,000 after buying an additional 264,921 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its holdings in Qiagen by 1.3% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 9,542,944 shares of the company’s stock worth $433,871,000 after acquiring an additional 118,135 shares during the period. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its position in Qiagen by 12.1% during the 4th quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 8,429,424 shares of the company’s stock worth $379,072,000 after acquiring an additional 906,589 shares during the last quarter. Deutsche Bank AG lifted its position in Qiagen by 9.7% during the 4th quarter. Deutsche Bank AG now owns 7,907,801 shares of the company’s stock worth $355,614,000 after acquiring an additional 697,342 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Amundi boosted its holdings in Qiagen by 4.4% during the third quarter. Amundi now owns 4,290,273 shares of the company’s stock valued at $201,471,000 after acquiring an additional 181,509 shares during the period. 70.00% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Qiagen

Qiagen NV (NYSE: QGEN) is a global provider of sample and assay technologies designed to enable molecular testing in the fields of molecular diagnostics, applied testing, academic research and pharmaceutical development. The company’s solutions span the full workflow of nucleic acid and protein analysis, offering customers standardized kits, instruments and software tools that streamline the preparation, detection and quantification of DNA, RNA and proteins.

The company’s product portfolio includes nucleic acid extraction and purification systems, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reagents and instrumentation, digital PCR platforms, next-generation sequencing (NGS) library‐preparation kits and proteomics solutions.