Legal & General Group Plc Decreases Stock Holdings in Element Solutions Inc (NYSE:ESI)

Legal & General Group Plc reduced its position in Element Solutions Inc (NYSE:ESI) by 11.3% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 255,677 shares of the company’s stock after selling 32,625 shares during the period. Legal & General Group Plc’s holdings in Element Solutions were worth $6,502,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of ESI. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in Element Solutions by 1.1% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 22,244,795 shares of the company’s stock valued at $565,685,000 after acquiring an additional 249,280 shares in the last quarter. Vaughan Nelson Investment Management L.P. lifted its holdings in shares of Element Solutions by 4.2% during the 4th quarter. Vaughan Nelson Investment Management L.P. now owns 5,209,130 shares of the company’s stock valued at $132,468,000 after purchasing an additional 209,441 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in Element Solutions by 0.4% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 3,555,852 shares of the company’s stock worth $90,456,000 after buying an additional 14,339 shares during the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted its holdings in Element Solutions by 80.4% in the fourth quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 2,921,021 shares of the company’s stock worth $74,282,000 after acquiring an additional 1,301,602 shares in the last quarter. Finally, GW&K Investment Management LLC increased its position in shares of Element Solutions by 0.8% in the 4th quarter. GW&K Investment Management LLC now owns 2,562,889 shares of the company’s stock valued at $65,174,000 after acquiring an additional 19,962 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 92.32% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms have commented on ESI. KeyCorp lowered their price objective on Element Solutions from $29.00 to $28.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, April 14th. UBS Group dropped their price target on shares of Element Solutions from $31.00 to $25.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, April 15th. Truist Financial raised shares of Element Solutions from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and cut their price objective for the company from $28.00 to $24.00 in a report on Monday, April 14th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Element Solutions from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 4th. Finally, Bank of America upgraded Element Solutions from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and cut their price target for the company from $29.00 to $24.00 in a research note on Tuesday, April 15th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, eight have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $27.88.

Element Solutions Trading Up 1.8 %

Shares of Element Solutions stock opened at $18.94 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 3.34, a quick ratio of 2.77 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.76. Element Solutions Inc has a twelve month low of $16.77 and a twelve month high of $29.78. The firm has a market capitalization of $4.59 billion, a PE ratio of 18.56, a P/E/G ratio of 2.30 and a beta of 1.28. The firm’s 50-day moving average price is $23.51 and its 200 day moving average price is $25.51.

Element Solutions (NYSE:ESI) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, February 18th. The company reported $0.35 earnings per share for the quarter, meeting the consensus estimate of $0.35. Element Solutions had a return on equity of 14.68% and a net margin of 9.94%. The business had revenue of $624.20 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $598.24 million. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Element Solutions Inc will post 1.45 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Element Solutions Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, March 17th. Stockholders of record on Monday, March 3rd were issued a dividend of $0.08 per share. This represents a $0.32 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.69%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, March 3rd. Element Solutions’s payout ratio is 31.37%.

Insider Activity

In other news, Director Martin E. Franklin sold 2,000,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, March 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $26.10, for a total value of $52,200,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 109,100 shares in the company, valued at $2,847,510. This represents a 94.83 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Company insiders own 7.90% of the company’s stock.

About Element Solutions

Element Solutions Inc operates as a specialty chemicals company in the United States, China, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Electronics, and Industrial & Specialty. The Electronics segment researches, formulates, and sells specialty chemicals and materials for various types of electronics hardware products.