TransAlta Co. (TSE:TA) Receives Consensus Rating of “Moderate Buy” from Brokerages

TransAlta Co. (TSE:TA) (NYSE:TAC) has been given an average recommendation of “Moderate Buy” by the eight ratings firms that are covering the stock, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 1-year price objective among brokers that have covered the stock in the last year is C$18.86.

A number of research firms have recently commented on TA. Scotiabank cut TransAlta from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and raised their target price for the company from C$19.00 to C$21.00 in a research note on Thursday, January 30th. TD Securities raised their target price on TransAlta from C$18.00 to C$19.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on TransAlta from C$17.00 to C$22.00 in a research note on Monday, December 16th. CIBC cut TransAlta from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and raised their target price for the company from C$17.00 to C$23.00 in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada raised their target price on TransAlta from C$14.00 to C$16.00 in a research note on Wednesday, November 6th.

TransAlta Trading Up 0.9 %

TSE TA opened at C$14.89 on Friday. TransAlta has a fifty-two week low of C$8.22 and a fifty-two week high of C$21.22. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 229.66, a quick ratio of 0.62 and a current ratio of 0.74. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of C$18.60 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of C$15.00. The stock has a market cap of C$4.47 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of -0.07 and a beta of 0.93.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other TransAlta news, Director John Harry Kousinioris sold 35,179 shares of TransAlta stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, December 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of C$20.73, for a total value of C$729,260.67. Also, Senior Officer Jane Nyla Fedoretz sold 10,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, December 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of C$19.41, for a total transaction of C$194,100.00. In the last quarter, insiders sold 204,763 shares of company stock valued at $3,478,670. Company insiders own 0.21% of the company’s stock.

About TransAlta

TransAlta Corporation engages in the development, production, and sale of electric energy. It operates through Hydro, Wind and Solar, Gas, Energy Transition, and Energy Marketing segments. The Hydro segment holds interest of approximately 922 megawatts (MW) of owned hydroelectric generating capacity located in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.