Traders Purchase Large Volume of ARM Call Options (NASDAQ:ARM)

ARM Holdings PLC Sponsored ADR (NASDAQ:ARM) was the target of some unusual options trading activity on Thursday. Stock traders bought 83,917 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 52% compared to the typical daily volume of 55,078 call options.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. Morgan Stanley reiterated an “equal weight” rating and set a $150.00 target price (up from $135.00) on shares of ARM in a research report on Tuesday, April 7th. Rosenblatt Securities reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $175.00 price objective on shares of ARM in a research note on Wednesday, March 25th. Jefferies Financial Group set a $170.00 price target on shares of ARM in a research note on Thursday, February 5th. Oddo Bhf set a $170.00 price target on shares of ARM in a research note on Monday, January 5th. Finally, UBS Group decreased their price target on shares of ARM from $175.00 to $170.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, February 5th. Eighteen equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $174.83.

ARM Stock Performance

NASDAQ ARM traded up $3.47 during trading on Thursday, hitting $162.81. 4,226,002 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 6,760,846. The stock has a market capitalization of $172.01 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 216.91, a PEG ratio of 7.27 and a beta of 3.33. ARM has a 12-month low of $95.32 and a 12-month high of $183.16. The business has a 50 day moving average of $133.04 and a 200-day moving average of $134.58.

ARM (NASDAQ:ARM) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 5th. The company reported $0.43 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.41 by $0.02. ARM had a net margin of 17.15% and a return on equity of 14.01%. The business had revenue of $1.24 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.23 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $0.39 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 26.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts expect that ARM will post 0.9 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other ARM news, CEO Rene A. Haas sold 23,867 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, March 25th. The shares were sold at an average price of $161.17, for a total transaction of $3,846,644.39. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 290,965 shares in the company, valued at $46,894,829.05. This represents a 7.58% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CFO Jason Child sold 21,280 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, March 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $148.37, for a total transaction of $3,157,313.60. Following the sale, the chief financial officer owned 174,706 shares in the company, valued at $25,921,129.22. The trade was a 10.86% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold 53,133 shares of company stock worth $8,288,586 over the last 90 days.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On ARM

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Diversified Trust Co bought a new position in shares of ARM in the first quarter worth approximately $231,000. Rockefeller Capital Management L.P. increased its position in shares of ARM by 0.7% in the fourth quarter. Rockefeller Capital Management L.P. now owns 26,745 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,923,000 after purchasing an additional 173 shares during the last quarter. Fund Advisors of America Inc FL bought a new position in shares of ARM in the fourth quarter worth approximately $663,000. Hsbc Holdings PLC grew its position in ARM by 25.2% during the fourth quarter. Hsbc Holdings PLC now owns 92,992 shares of the company’s stock valued at $10,281,000 after acquiring an additional 18,717 shares during the last quarter. Finally, SHP Wealth Management bought a new position in ARM during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $69,000. 7.53% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

About ARM

Arm Limited (NASDAQ: ARM) is a global semiconductor IP company best known for designing energy-efficient processor architectures and related technologies that underpin a wide range of computing devices. Founded in 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple and VLSI Technology and headquartered in Cambridge, England, Arm develops the ARM instruction set architectures and core processor designs that chipmakers license and integrate into custom system-on-chip (SoC) products. The company operates a licensing and royalty business model rather than manufacturing chips itself.

Arm’s product portfolio includes CPU core families (such as Cortex and Neoverse lines), GPU and multimedia IP (Mali), neural processing units (Ethos) and a suite of system and physical IP blocks.