Louisiana State Employees Retirement System Acquires Shares of 18,300 Ingredion Incorporated (NYSE:INGR)

Louisiana State Employees Retirement System acquired a new stake in Ingredion Incorporated (NYSE:INGR) during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm acquired 18,300 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,986,000.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in INGR. Quarry LP purchased a new position in Ingredion in the 2nd quarter valued at $30,000. Cary Street Partners Investment Advisory LLC increased its stake in shares of Ingredion by 63.9% in the 3rd quarter. Cary Street Partners Investment Advisory LLC now owns 377 shares of the company’s stock worth $37,000 after acquiring an additional 147 shares during the last quarter. Allworth Financial LP increased its stake in shares of Ingredion by 414.1% in the 3rd quarter. Allworth Financial LP now owns 401 shares of the company’s stock worth $39,000 after acquiring an additional 323 shares during the last quarter. Blue Trust Inc. increased its stake in shares of Ingredion by 40.2% in the 4th quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 359 shares of the company’s stock worth $39,000 after acquiring an additional 103 shares during the last quarter. Finally, IFP Advisors Inc increased its stake in shares of Ingredion by 33.7% in the 3rd quarter. IFP Advisors Inc now owns 484 shares of the company’s stock worth $48,000 after acquiring an additional 122 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 85.27% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have issued reports on INGR. Stephens reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $130.00 target price on shares of Ingredion in a research note on Wednesday, February 7th. Barclays raised their price objective on Ingredion from $115.00 to $122.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, March 6th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Ingredion from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the stock from $122.00 to $135.00 in a research report on Thursday, February 15th. Finally, StockNews.com raised Ingredion from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, March 22nd. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, four have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Ingredion currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $126.67.

Insider Activity at Ingredion

In other news, SVP Larry Fernandes sold 2,369 shares of Ingredion stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $115.08, for a total value of $272,624.52. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 28,966 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,333,407.28. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. In other news, SVP Larry Fernandes sold 2,369 shares of Ingredion stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $115.08, for a total value of $272,624.52. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 28,966 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,333,407.28. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, VP Davida Marie Gable sold 1,968 shares of Ingredion stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $117.38, for a total value of $231,003.84. Following the completion of the transaction, the vice president now owns 1,723 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $202,245.74. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 58,921 shares of company stock worth $6,903,045 in the last three months. 1.80% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Ingredion Stock Performance

Shares of Ingredion stock opened at $111.30 on Thursday. The business has a 50-day moving average of $114.75 and a 200 day moving average of $107.13. Ingredion Incorporated has a 12 month low of $89.54 and a 12 month high of $118.83. The stock has a market capitalization of $7.30 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.59, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.04 and a beta of 0.81. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.49, a current ratio of 1.92 and a quick ratio of 1.10.

Ingredion (NYSE:INGR) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, February 6th. The company reported $1.97 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.87 by $0.10. Ingredion had a return on equity of 18.57% and a net margin of 7.88%. The company had revenue of $1.92 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.07 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $1.65 EPS. Ingredion’s revenue for the quarter was down 3.3% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Ingredion Incorporated will post 9.62 earnings per share for the current year.

Ingredion Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, April 23rd. Investors of record on Monday, April 1st will be issued a dividend of $0.78 per share. This represents a $3.12 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.80%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, March 28th. Ingredion’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 32.50%.

About Ingredion

Ingredion Incorporated, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells sweeteners, starches, nutrition ingredients, and biomaterial solutions derived from wet milling and processing corn, and other starch-based materials to a range of industries in North America, South America, the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.