Prepare Yourself for Liftoff: Alaska Air Group Inc (ALK)

With 2.4 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 3.0 million shares. The 52-week range on ALK shows that it touched its highest point at $78.08 and its lowest point at $32.62 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $88.36. Beta for the stock currently stands at 1.26.

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 ALK was down-trending over the past week, with a drop of -8.12%, but this was down by -9.78% over a month. Three-month performance surged to 26.05% while six-month performance rose 83.61%. The stock gained 79.19% in the past year, while it has gained 2.39% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for ALK yields 3.05 with Next year EPS estimates of 7.91. For the next quarter, that number is -0.56. This implies an EPS growth rate of 25.51% for this year and 29.40% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 27.47% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of -13.04%.

Float and Shares Shorts:

At present, 123.12 million ALK shares are outstanding with a float of 122.49 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 ALK since 10 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 9 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 1 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 $4.37922 being high and $4.33932 being low. For ALK, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $4.35927. Based on analyst estimates, the high estimate for the next quarter is $3.3 and the low estimate is $2.6. The average estimate for the next quarter is thus $2.98.

Summary of Insider Activity:

Insiders traded ALK 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.