Ball (NYSE:BALL) Announces Stock Buyback Program

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

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price objective on shares of Ball from $52.00 to $62.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Monday, March 18th. Mizuho upped their price objective on shares of Ball to $63.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, February 20th. Jefferies Financial Group upped their price objective on shares of Ball from $69.00 to $78.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 22nd. Bank of America raised shares of Ball from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price objective for the stock from $61.00 to $72.00 in a report on Monday, March 4th. Finally, Wolfe Research assumed coverage on shares of Ball in a report on Friday, March 1st. They set a “peer perform” rating for the company. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have given a hold rating and three have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $65.58.

Ball Price Performance

NYSE:BALL opened at $65.45 on Friday. Ball has a one year low of $42.81 and a one year high of $67.97. The stock has a market cap of $20.66 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.22, a PEG ratio of 4.23 and a beta of 0.89. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.96, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.54. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $64.97 and a 200 day moving average price of $57.78.

Ball (NYSE:BALL) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 1st. The company reported $0.78 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.77 by $0.01. Ball had a net margin of 5.04% and a return on equity of 23.81%. The company had revenue of $3.40 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.56 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $0.44 EPS. The business’s revenue was down 4.1% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts anticipate that Ball will post 3.09 earnings per share for the current year.

Ball Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, June 17th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 3rd will be paid a $0.20 dividend. This represents a $0.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.22%. Ball’s dividend payout ratio is 35.71%.

Insider Activity

In other news, insider Daniel William Fisher purchased 3,869 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred 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 acquisition, the insider now directly owns 111,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,222,068.96. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Corporate insiders own 0.81% of the company’s stock.

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.