CNB Bank Grows Position in Blackstone Inc. $BX

CNB Bank boosted its position in Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX) by 14,278.8% in the second quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The firm owned 4,745 shares of the asset manager’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,712 shares during the period. CNB Bank’s holdings in Blackstone were worth $710,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in BX. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC raised its holdings in Blackstone by 519,669.1% in the second quarter. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC now owns 70,132,441 shares of the asset manager’s stock worth $10,490,411,000 after purchasing an additional 70,118,948 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Blackstone by 1.6% during the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 67,997,581 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $9,504,702,000 after acquiring an additional 1,102,949 shares in the last quarter. Nuveen LLC acquired a new position in shares of Blackstone during the first quarter valued at about $151,524,000. Amundi increased its holdings in shares of Blackstone by 69.3% during the first quarter. Amundi now owns 2,421,502 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $323,000,000 after acquiring an additional 990,947 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Blackstone by 16.3% during the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 5,292,320 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $739,761,000 after acquiring an additional 742,829 shares in the last quarter. 70.00% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts have recently commented on BX shares. JMP Securities reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating and set a $195.00 price objective on shares of Blackstone in a research note on Friday. HSBC boosted their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $170.00 to $179.00 in a report on Wednesday, October 15th. Piper Sandler dropped their target price on Blackstone from $173.00 to $168.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Friday. Jefferies Financial Group decreased their price objective on Blackstone from $207.00 to $199.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, October 7th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group raised their price target on Blackstone from $172.00 to $173.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, October 3rd. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, ten have given a Buy rating and nine have assigned a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, Blackstone currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $180.84.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Blackstone news, Director Joseph Baratta sold 113,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, September 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $175.69, for a total transaction of $19,852,970.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 695,757 shares in the company, valued at approximately $122,237,547.33. The trade was a 13.97% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider John G. Finley sold 21,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $171.46, for a total value of $3,686,390.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 453,836 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $77,814,720.56. This represents a 4.52% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have bought 2,538,345 shares of company stock worth $65,046,628 and have sold 16,984,634 shares worth $155,181,346. 1.00% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Blackstone Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:BX opened at $154.55 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $113.92 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 44.16, a PEG ratio of 1.26 and a beta of 1.77. Blackstone Inc. has a one year low of $115.66 and a one year high of $200.96. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $170.20 and a 200-day simple moving average of $155.77. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.60, a quick ratio of 0.74 and a current ratio of 0.75.

Blackstone (NYSE:BX) last released its earnings results on Friday, November 22nd. The asset manager reported $0.97 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter. The business had revenue of $2.49 billion for the quarter. Blackstone had a return on equity of 22.30% and a net margin of 20.56%. On average, analysts predict that Blackstone Inc. will post 5.87 EPS for the current year.

Blackstone Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, November 10th. Investors of record on Monday, November 3rd will be issued a dividend of $1.29 per share. This is an increase from Blackstone’s previous quarterly dividend of $1.03. This represents a $5.16 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 3rd. Blackstone’s dividend payout ratio is currently 117.71%.

Blackstone Company Profile

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.