PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) Board of Directors Declares Stock Buyback Plan

PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) declared that its board has initiated a share repurchase program on Thursday, April 18th, RTT News reports. The company plans to buyback $2.50 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the specialty chemicals company to reacquire up to 8.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are often a sign that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

PPG has been the subject of several recent research reports. UBS Group decreased their price objective on PPG Industries from $156.00 to $150.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Friday. Wolfe Research initiated coverage on shares of PPG Industries in a report on Friday, March 1st. They issued a “peer perform” rating for the company. Royal Bank of Canada dropped their price objective on shares of PPG Industries from $156.00 to $141.00 and set a “sector perform” rating on the stock in a research note on Monday. StockNews.com lowered shares of PPG Industries from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upgraded PPG Industries from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and upped their target price for the stock from $150.00 to $163.00 in a report on Thursday, April 11th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have assigned a hold rating and nine have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $155.50.

PPG Industries Price Performance

Shares of NYSE PPG opened at $131.13 on Tuesday. PPG Industries has a fifty-two week low of $120.32 and a fifty-two week high of $152.89. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a current ratio of 1.47. The company has a market cap of $30.86 billion, a PE ratio of 22.15, a P/E/G ratio of 1.56 and a beta of 1.28. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $140.16 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $138.99.

PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) last released its quarterly earnings data on Friday, April 19th. The specialty chemicals company reported $1.86 earnings per share for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.86. The business had revenue of $4.31 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.43 billion. PPG Industries had a return on equity of 23.13% and a net margin of 7.74%. The company’s revenue was down 1.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $1.82 EPS. As a group, equities analysts expect that PPG Industries will post 8.46 EPS for the current fiscal year.

PPG Industries Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, June 12th. Investors of record on Friday, May 10th will be paid a $0.65 dividend. This represents a $2.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.98%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, May 9th. PPG Industries’s dividend payout ratio is currently 43.92%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other PPG Industries news, CFO Vincent J. Morales sold 3,400 shares of PPG Industries stock in a transaction on Friday, March 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $140.94, for a total value of $479,196.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 28,439 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,008,192.66. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. 0.56% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

About PPG Industries

PPG Industries, Inc manufactures and distributes paints, coatings, and specialty materials in the United States, Canada, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It operates through two segments, Performance Coatings and Industrial Coatings. The Performance Coatings segment offers coatings, solvents, adhesives, sealants, sundries, and software for automotive and commercial transport/fleet repair and refurbishing, light industrial coatings, and specialty coatings for signs; wood stains; paints, thermoplastics, pavement marking products, and other advanced technologies for pavement marking for government, commercial infrastructure, painting, and maintenance contractors; and coatings, sealants, transparencies, transparent armor, adhesives, engineered materials, and packaging and chemical management services for commercial, military, regional jet, and general aviation aircraft.