SG Americas Securities LLC Buys Shares of 96,848 Qiagen N.V. $QGEN

SG Americas Securities LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Qiagen N.V. (NYSE:QGEN) in the first quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The fund purchased 96,848 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,878,000.

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

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. Barclays set a $38.00 price objective on shares of Qiagen and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Qiagen from an “overweight” rating to an “overweight” rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $40.00 to $42.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their price target on shares of Qiagen from $60.00 to $45.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, April 29th. Weiss Ratings lowered shares of Qiagen from a “hold (c-)” rating to a “sell (d+)” rating in a research report on Friday, May 29th. Finally, Citigroup reissued a “hold” rating on shares of Qiagen in a research note on Monday, May 18th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, four have assigned a Buy rating, seven have assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $43.15.

Qiagen Trading Up 0.8%

Qiagen stock opened at $39.73 on Tuesday. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $36.32 and a 200 day moving average price of $43.07. Qiagen N.V. has a 52 week low of $32.53 and a 52 week high of $57.81. The stock has a market cap of $8.19 billion, a PE ratio of 20.75, a P/E/G ratio of 3.93 and a beta of 0.66. The company has a current ratio of 3.21, a quick ratio of 2.57 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.49.

Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) last released its earnings results on Thursday, May 7th. The company reported $0.54 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.54. The company had revenue of $492.32 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $496.15 million. Qiagen had a net margin of 19.16% and a return on equity of 14.40%. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $0.56 EPS. Equities research analysts predict that Qiagen N.V. will post 2.43 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Qiagen Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced an annual dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, July 14th. Investors of record on Tuesday, July 7th will be given a dividend of $0.35 per share. This represents a yield of 104.0%. This is an increase from Qiagen’s previous annual dividend of $0.26. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, July 7th. Qiagen’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 13.61%.

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.