Bahl & Gaynor Inc. Sells 4,795 Shares of Blackstone Inc. $BX

Bahl & Gaynor Inc. decreased its holdings in Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX) by 2.1% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 225,902 shares of the asset manager’s stock after selling 4,795 shares during the period. Bahl & Gaynor Inc.’s holdings in Blackstone were worth $31,577,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Bernard Wealth Management Corp. bought a new position in shares of Blackstone in the 4th quarter valued at about $34,000. Putney Financial Group LLC bought a new position in shares of Blackstone in the 4th quarter valued at about $34,000. von Borstel & Associates Inc. bought a new position in shares of Blackstone in the 1st quarter valued at about $28,000. Vision Financial Markets LLC bought a new position in shares of Blackstone in the 1st quarter valued at about $35,000. Finally, Garde Capital Inc. bought a new stake in Blackstone in the first quarter worth about $36,000. Institutional investors own 70.00% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several analysts have issued reports on BX shares. Piper Sandler raised their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $157.00 to $181.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Monday, July 28th. The Goldman Sachs Group reissued a “neutral” rating on shares of Blackstone in a research note on Friday, July 25th. Wells Fargo & Company raised their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $153.00 to $167.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, July 11th. Evercore ISI raised their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $165.00 to $197.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, July 25th. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft raised their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $170.00 to $192.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, July 25th. Nine investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and nine have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Blackstone has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $170.12.

Insider Activity at Blackstone

In other Blackstone news, insider Vikrant Sawhney sold 50,850 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, August 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $173.64, for a total value of $8,829,594.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 737,248 shares in the company, valued at $128,015,742.72. This trade represents a 6.45% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CAO David Payne sold 9,400 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, August 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $169.97, for a total transaction of $1,597,718.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer owned 54,488 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $9,261,325.36. This trade represents a 14.71% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders bought 1,189,806 shares of company stock valued at $30,046,627 and sold 16,850,134 shares valued at $131,641,986. 1.00% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Blackstone Stock Performance

Shares of BX stock opened at $170.2430 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $125.48 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 45.76, a PEG ratio of 1.33 and a beta of 1.71. The company’s 50 day moving average is $161.69 and its 200 day moving average is $149.76. The company has a quick ratio of 0.74, a current ratio of 0.74 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61. Blackstone Inc. has a 52-week low of $115.66 and a 52-week high of $200.96.

Blackstone (NYSE:BX) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 24th. The asset manager reported $1.21 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.10 by $0.11. The company had revenue of $3.07 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.77 billion. Blackstone had a net margin of 20.83% and a return on equity of 20.47%. Blackstone’s revenue was up 32.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.98 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Blackstone Inc. will post 5.87 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Blackstone Increases Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, August 11th. Investors of record on Monday, August 4th were issued a dividend of $1.03 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, August 4th. This is a positive change from Blackstone’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.93. This represents a $4.12 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.4%. Blackstone’s dividend payout ratio is 110.75%.

About Blackstone

Blackstone Inc is an alternative asset management firm specializing in real estate, private equity, hedge fund solutions, credit, secondary funds of funds, public debt and equity and multi-asset class strategies. The firm typically invests in early-stage companies. It also provide capital markets services.