John Stafford III Purchases 16,754 Shares of Aware (NASDAQ:AWRE) Stock

Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ:AWRE) Director John Stafford III acquired 16,754 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 13th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $1.28 per share, with a total value of $21,445.12. Following the completion of the purchase, the director directly owned 5,121,954 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,556,101.12. The trade was a 0.33% increase in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link.

Aware Stock Performance

Shares of Aware stock opened at $1.31 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $28.30 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -4.68 and a beta of 0.84. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $1.72 and a 200-day moving average price of $2.11. Aware, Inc. has a one year low of $1.10 and a one year high of $2.95.

Aware (NASDAQ:AWRE) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, March 4th. The software maker reported ($0.07) earnings per share for the quarter. The company had revenue of $4.66 million for the quarter. Aware had a negative net margin of 33.97% and a negative return on equity of 21.19%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Aware

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in AWRE. CIBC Private Wealth Group LLC lifted its holdings in Aware by 14.3% during the 3rd quarter. CIBC Private Wealth Group LLC now owns 80,000 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $193,000 after buying an additional 10,000 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Aware by 1.6% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 840,650 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $2,026,000 after acquiring an additional 13,070 shares in the last quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. increased its position in shares of Aware by 71.6% during the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 34,595 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $55,000 after acquiring an additional 14,436 shares during the period. XTX Topco Ltd purchased a new position in shares of Aware during the fourth quarter worth approximately $30,000. Finally, Pekin Hardy Strauss Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Aware during the third quarter valued at approximately $42,000. Institutional investors own 24.39% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Separately, Weiss Ratings reissued a “sell (d-)” rating on shares of Aware in a research note on Wednesday, January 21st. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Sell rating, According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Sell”.

Aware Company Profile

Aware, Inc is a technology company specializing in biometric software and image processing solutions. Its core offerings include fingerprint, face and iris recognition algorithms, biometric template management, and mobile enrolment tools designed to capture and verify identities in secure environments. The company’s software development kits (SDKs) and web services APIs enable system integrators, device manufacturers and application developers to embed biometric and forensic capabilities into their products and services.

Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, Aware evolved from an imaging technology provider into a leading vendor of biometric software.