Ball (NYSE:BALL) to Repurchase 40,000,000 Stock

Ball (NYSE:BALL) announced that its board has authorized a share repurchase program on Wednesday, April 24th, RTT News reports. The company plans to buyback 40,000,000 outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the company to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are typically a sign that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research firms have recently weighed in on BALL. Morgan Stanley assumed coverage on Ball in a research report on Monday, March 18th. They set an “equal weight” rating and a $68.00 price objective on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada raised Ball from a “sector perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and increased their target price for the company from $61.00 to $74.00 in a report on Tuesday, February 20th. TheStreet raised Ball from a “c+” rating to a “b-” rating in a report on Friday, March 8th. Barclays reissued an “equal weight” rating and issued a $71.00 target price (up previously from $66.00) on shares of Ball in a report on Thursday, April 4th. Finally, Mizuho increased their target price on Ball to $63.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, February 20th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have assigned a hold rating and three have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $65.58.

Ball Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:BALL opened at $69.82 on Friday. Ball has a 52 week low of $42.81 and a 52 week high of $70.75. The company has a quick ratio of 0.54, a current ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.96. The company has a market cap of $22.04 billion, a P/E ratio of 31.17, a PEG ratio of 4.21 and a beta of 0.89. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $65.12 and a 200 day moving average price of $57.95.

Ball (NYSE:BALL) last issued its earnings results on Friday, April 26th. The company reported $0.68 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.56 by $0.12. Ball had a net margin of 5.04% and a return on equity of 23.81%. The company had revenue of $2.87 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.23 billion. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.69 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was down 17.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts predict that Ball will post 3.09 earnings per share for the current year.

Ball Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, June 17th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 3rd will be paid a $0.20 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Monday, June 3rd. This represents a $0.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.15%. Ball’s payout ratio is currently 35.71%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, insider Daniel William Fisher bought 3,869 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, March 14th. The stock was purchased at an average cost of $64.56 per share, with a total value of $249,782.64. Following the purchase, the insider now owns 111,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,222,068.96. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. 0.81% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Ball Company Profile

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.