Wall Street Zen Upgrades Korn Ferry (NYSE:KFY) to Strong-Buy

Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of Korn Ferry (NYSE:KFY) from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a research note released on Saturday.

Separately, Truist Financial cut their price objective on shares of Korn Ferry from $84.00 to $80.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, April 15th.

Korn Ferry Trading Down 1.0%

Shares of KFY opened at $67.49 on Friday. The company’s fifty day moving average is $64.90 and its 200 day moving average is $68.22. Korn Ferry has a fifty-two week low of $59.23 and a fifty-two week high of $80.64. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.48 billion, a PE ratio of 14.42 and a beta of 1.41. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22, a quick ratio of 2.07 and a current ratio of 2.07.

Korn Ferry (NYSE:KFY) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, March 11th. The business services provider reported $1.19 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.13 by $0.06. Korn Ferry had a net margin of 9.03% and a return on equity of 14.27%. The business had revenue of $676.50 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $650.45 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $1.07 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was down .1% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts expect that Korn Ferry will post 4.75 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Korn Ferry Increases Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, April 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, March 27th were given a dividend of $0.48 per share. This is a boost from Korn Ferry’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.37. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, March 27th. This represents a $1.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.85%. Korn Ferry’s payout ratio is 41.29%.

Institutional Trading of Korn Ferry

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in KFY. Barclays PLC boosted its stake in shares of Korn Ferry by 129.0% during the third quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 239,937 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $18,053,000 after purchasing an additional 135,148 shares during the period. HB Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Korn Ferry during the fourth quarter valued at $219,000. SG Americas Securities LLC boosted its stake in shares of Korn Ferry by 202.4% during the fourth quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 9,552 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $644,000 after purchasing an additional 6,393 shares during the period. Janney Montgomery Scott LLC boosted its stake in shares of Korn Ferry by 3.5% during the fourth quarter. Janney Montgomery Scott LLC now owns 15,571 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $1,050,000 after purchasing an additional 529 shares during the period. Finally, Blue Trust Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Korn Ferry by 44.8% during the fourth quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 3,204 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $216,000 after purchasing an additional 991 shares during the period. 98.82% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

About Korn Ferry

Korn Ferry, together with its subsidiaries, provides organizational consulting services worldwide. It operates through four segments: Consulting, Digital, Executive Search, and Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) & Professional Search. The company provides executive search services to recruit board level, chief executive, other senior executive, and general management talent of organizations.