With 0.82 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 1.31 million shares. The 52-week range on LAZ shows that it touched its highest point at $61.14 and its lowest point at $31.97 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $43.33. With its current market cap of 4.06 billion, LAZ has annualized dividend of $2.00 while the current yield stands at 4.63%. Beta for the stock currently stands at 1.29.
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 LAZ was down-trending over the past week, with a drop of -6.62%, but this was up by 13.76% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -12.90% while six-month performance fell -21.52%. The stock gained 5.30% in the past year, while it has lost -16.18% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for LAZ yields 2.87 with Next year EPS estimates of 3.74. For the next quarter, that number is 0.35. This implies an EPS growth rate of -4.43% for this year and 67.38% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 25.97% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of 0.60%.
Float and Shares Shorts:
At present, 94.15 million LAZ shares are outstanding with a float of 91.46 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 LAZ since 5 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 3 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 2 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 $2.22312 being high and $1.94778 being low. For LAZ, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $2.10075. Based on analyst estimates, the high estimate for the next quarter is $0.62 and the low estimate is $0.34. The average estimate for the next quarter is thus $0.49.
