Bank of America Co. Attracts Investors and Analysts with Hold Recommendation and Dividend Payout

Bank of America Co. has been making news recently as it continues to attract investors and financial analysts alike. This multinational investment bank and financial services corporation, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina has been assigned an average recommendation of “Hold” from twenty analysts covering the company, according to Bloomberg.com.

Of these analysts covering Bank of America, ten have issued a buy rating, seven recommend holding the stock while two rate the stock as sell. Those who have given ratings to the stock over the past year predict that its twelve-month target price will be somewhere around $36.83 per share.

Moreover, on Friday 30th June 2017, the firm also disclosed its quarterly dividend payment. Shareholders holding stocks of record on Friday June 2nd qualified for a quarterly payout of $0.22 per share. With this announcement, Bank of America’s annualized dividend stands at $0.88 per share – resulting in a yield of 3.09%. The company’s payout ratio based on earnings is calculated at 26.43%.

Amidst all these developments, institutional investors and hedge funds are positively positioning themselves with respect to Bank of America Co.’s shares. A number of institutions including Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC and Parnassus Investments LLC have increased their stakes in Bank of America significantly by purchasing millions more shares during the last quarter.

This trend is persisting amongst institutional investors as Fisher Asset Management LLC alone grew its position in shares from just above two million to almost nineteen million within the space of one quarter in 2016.

These latest reports highlight how investors are paying close attention to Bank of America Co.’s current performance and prospects for growth over time – demonstrating the level of confidence that exists within certain quarters when it comes to investing in banking companies like this one.

Analyst Reports Provide Insight into Bank of America’s Market Standing

Bank of America: Insights into Recent Analyst Report

Bank of America (BAC) has been subject to several research analyst reports that have provided insights into the company’s current and potential standing in the market. The most recent report comes from StockNews.com, which began covering BAC shares on March 16th. The report assigned a “hold” rating for the company, indicating neither a buy nor a sell recommendation.

On April 10th, JPMorgan Chase & Co lowered its price target on BAC shares from $38.00 to $34.00 and gave an “overweight” rating on the stock in its research report. Another report came from Evercore ISI on April 19th, which lowered the target price on BAC shares from $40.00 to $36.00 but set an “outperform” rating on the stock.

Contrarily, Oppenheimer upped BAC shares’ price objective from $44.00 to $47.00 and assigned an “outperform” rating in its research note released on April 19th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company also weighed in by decreasing its price target from $52.00 to $45.00 but maintained an “overweight” rating on the stock.

In another development, insider Matthew M Koder sold more than 300k shares of Bank of America stock in three consecutive transactions between February 2nd and February 23rd at average prices ranging between $34 and nearly $36 per share.

The bank recently disclosed it quarterly dividend payment of $0.22 per share payable to shareholders as of June 2nd record date.

Bank of America’s market performance will play out over time influenced by various factors beyond these analyses include ever-evolving economic policies, consumer demand trends for financial products, new regulatory environment introductions etc.

As it stands now BAC has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.13, indicating that it is more leveraged than traditional banks while its quick ratio and current ratios are the same sitting at 0.82. In the past year, BAC shares have oscillated between a 12-month high of $38.75 and a low of $26.32, with notable volatility in recent months.

In the latest quarterly earnings results released by BAC on April 18th, the financial services provider reported $0.94 earnings per share beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.83 figures by $0.11.Annually, Equities analysts expect that Bank of America will post 3.37 earnings per share for this current year.

Overall, it is still too soon to say definitively whether Bank of America will outperform or underperform compared to its competition or even its own past performance in the short term.

Nonetheless , Insights from diverse analyst reports can provide management and investors vital perspectives needed to ascertain long-term vision and potential strategic advantages among other goals even in times like these when market volatility remains high amidst unprecedented global economic uncertainty fueled largely by Covid-19 pandemic impact .