Are Smart Investors Making the Right Decision? Western Alliance Bancorp (WAL)

With 1.12 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 1.14 million shares. The 52-week range on WAL shows that it touched its highest point at $98.10 and its lowest point at $53.75 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $106.62. With its current market cap of 8.97 billion, WAL has annualized dividend of $1.50 while the current yield stands at 1.85%. Beta for the stock currently stands at 1.27.

Price Performance and Earnings:

Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of WAL was down-trending over the past week, with a drop of -5.82%, but this was down by -3.79% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -13.27% while six-month performance fell -0.60%. The stock gained 43.95% in the past year, while it has lost -2.81% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for WAL yields 7.09 with Next year EPS estimates of 10.63. For the next quarter, that number is 1.80. This implies an EPS growth rate of 24.36% for this year and 20.54% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 19.85% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of 7.93%.

Float and Shares Shorts:

At present, 110.05 million WAL shares are outstanding with a float of 108.74 million shares on hand for trading.

Analysts Ratings:

Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for WAL since 9 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 6 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 3 believe that the stock is worth HOLDING, 0 give it an OVERWEIGHT rating, and 0 thinks that it’s UNDERWEIGHT. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential.

EPS: Estimates vs Actual

It is also common to use earnings estimates to evaluate a firm’s growth potential and to determine trading strategy. Analysts have provided yearly estimates in a range of $7.13372 being high and $6.94521 being low. For WAL, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $7.05435.

Summary of Insider Activity:

Insiders traded WAL stock several times over the past three months with 0 Buys and 0 Sells. In these transactions, 0 shares were bought while 0 shares were sold. The number of buy transactions has remained unchanged to 0 while that of sell transactions has remained unmoved to 0 over the past year. The total number of shares bought during that period was 0 while 0 shares were sold.