BMO Capital Markets Has Lowered Expectations for PPL (NYSE:PPL) Stock Price

PPL (NYSE:PPL) had its price objective dropped by investment analysts at BMO Capital Markets from $40.00 to $39.00 in a research report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has an “outperform” rating on the utilities provider’s stock. BMO Capital Markets’ price objective points to a potential upside of 10.96% from the stock’s current price.

Several other analysts also recently issued reports on PPL. UBS Group lifted their target price on PPL from $38.00 to $41.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Monday, February 23rd. Wells Fargo & Company reaffirmed an “overweight” rating on shares of PPL in a report on Tuesday, April 21st. Jefferies Financial Group lifted their price objective on shares of PPL from $40.00 to $48.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, April 13th. Mizuho set a $37.00 target price on shares of PPL in a research report on Friday. Finally, Weiss Ratings cut shares of PPL from a “buy (b+)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Friday, May 22nd. Ten analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and three have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $41.50.

PPL Stock Up 0.4%

PPL opened at $35.15 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $26.44 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.43, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.39 and a beta of 0.57. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.27, a quick ratio of 0.88 and a current ratio of 1.00. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $37.32 and its 200 day moving average is $36.59. PPL has a fifty-two week low of $33.17 and a fifty-two week high of $40.10.

PPL (NYSE:PPL) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, May 8th. The utilities provider reported $0.63 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.61 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $2.77 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.51 billion. PPL had a return on equity of 9.41% and a net margin of 13.09%.PPL’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $0.60 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that PPL will post 1.95 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Reaves W H & Co. Inc. raised its holdings in shares of PPL by 13.5% in the 3rd quarter. Reaves W H & Co. Inc. now owns 4,336,283 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $161,136,000 after purchasing an additional 515,523 shares in the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC increased its holdings in PPL by 905.7% during the fourth quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 523,756 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $18,342,000 after buying an additional 471,679 shares during the period. Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors LP raised its stake in PPL by 59.5% in the third quarter. Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors LP now owns 452,711 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $16,823,000 after buying an additional 168,818 shares in the last quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors lifted its holdings in PPL by 62.8% during the fourth quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 115,776 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $4,054,000 after buying an additional 44,657 shares during the period. Finally, Pinebridge Investments LLC purchased a new stake in PPL during the fourth quarter worth $1,060,000. 76.99% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

About PPL

PPL Corporation is an energy company that owns and operates electric transmission and distribution infrastructure and provides related customer services. The company’s core business centers on delivering electricity to residential, commercial and industrial customers through regulated utility operations, maintaining grid reliability, responding to outages and managing customer billing and account services.

PPL’s activities include construction and maintenance of distribution and transmission lines, meter and grid management, and programs to support energy efficiency and the interconnection of distributed resources.