Share Buyback Plan Approved by Ball (NYSE:BALL) Board

Ball (NYSE:BALL) declared that its board has approved a stock buyback plan on Wednesday, April 24th, RTT News reports. The company plans to buyback 40,000,000 shares. This buyback authorization allows the company to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are usually a sign that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts have commented on BALL shares. Jefferies Financial Group increased their price objective on shares of Ball from $69.00 to $78.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, March 22nd. Royal Bank of Canada upgraded shares of Ball from a “sector perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and increased their price objective for the company from $61.00 to $74.00 in a research report on Tuesday, February 20th. Bank of America upgraded shares of Ball from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price objective for the company from $61.00 to $72.00 in a research report on Monday, March 4th. UBS Group started coverage on shares of Ball in a report on Tuesday, January 16th. They issued a “sell” rating and a $55.00 target price for the company. Finally, Wolfe Research started coverage on shares of Ball in a report on Friday, March 1st. They issued a “peer perform” rating for the company. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have assigned a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $65.58.

Ball Trading Down 0.5 %

BALL stock opened at $65.18 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $20.57 billion, a PE ratio of 29.10, a P/E/G ratio of 4.23 and a beta of 0.89. Ball has a 12 month low of $42.81 and a 12 month high of $67.97. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $64.90 and its 200 day moving average is $57.73. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.96, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.54.

Ball (NYSE:BALL) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 1st. The company reported $0.78 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.77 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $3.40 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.56 billion. Ball had a net margin of 5.04% and a return on equity of 23.81%. The firm’s revenue was down 4.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.44 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that Ball will post 3.09 EPS for the current year.

Ball Dividend Announcement

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, June 17th. Investors of record on Monday, June 3rd will be paid a $0.20 dividend. This represents a $0.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.23%. Ball’s dividend payout ratio is presently 35.71%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Ball

In other Ball news, insider Daniel William Fisher bought 3,869 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, March 14th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $64.56 per share, with a total value of $249,782.64. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 111,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,222,068.96. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Insiders own 0.81% of the company’s stock.

About Ball

Ball Corporation supplies aluminum packaging products for the beverage, personal care, and household products industries in the United States, Brazil, and internationally. The company manufactures and sells aluminum beverage containers to fillers of carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, and other beverages.