Pentair (NYSE:PNR) Rating Increased to Strong-Buy at Baird R W

Baird R W upgraded shares of Pentair (NYSE:PNR) from a hold rating to a strong-buy rating in a research report released on Tuesday,Zacks.com reports.

Several other equities analysts have also recently weighed in on the company. Northcoast Research raised Pentair from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, February 5th. Stifel Nicolaus lowered their target price on Pentair from $126.00 to $125.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, January 24th. KeyCorp restated a “sector weight” rating and set a $115.00 price target on shares of Pentair in a research note on Monday, January 6th. Citigroup lowered their price objective on shares of Pentair from $126.00 to $119.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, January 13th. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded shares of Pentair from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 11th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, twelve have assigned a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $112.27.

Pentair Trading Down 1.0 %

NYSE PNR opened at $89.19 on Tuesday. Pentair has a 12 month low of $72.63 and a 12 month high of $110.71. The company has a current ratio of 1.60, a quick ratio of 0.92 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.46. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $94.86 and its 200-day moving average price is $98.69. The stock has a market cap of $14.70 billion, a P/E ratio of 23.85, a P/E/G ratio of 1.87 and a beta of 1.23.

Pentair (NYSE:PNR) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, February 4th. The industrial products company reported $1.08 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.02 by $0.06. Pentair had a net margin of 15.32% and a return on equity of 20.94%. The company had revenue of $972.90 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $970.95 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.87 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down 1.2% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Pentair will post 4.77 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Pentair Dividend Announcement

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, May 2nd. Shareholders of record on Friday, April 18th will be paid a $0.25 dividend. This represents a $1.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.12%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, April 17th. Pentair’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 26.74%.

Institutional Trading of Pentair

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in PNR. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Pentair by 0.7% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 20,216,366 shares of the industrial products company’s stock valued at $2,034,575,000 after purchasing an additional 148,031 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Pentair by 3.1% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 8,756,075 shares of the industrial products company’s stock valued at $856,257,000 after buying an additional 259,922 shares during the period. FMR LLC lifted its position in Pentair by 7.0% in the fourth quarter. FMR LLC now owns 6,101,253 shares of the industrial products company’s stock valued at $614,030,000 after buying an additional 396,581 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in Pentair by 2.2% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,086,763 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $410,240,000 after buying an additional 87,244 shares during the period. Finally, UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC increased its position in shares of Pentair by 6.7% during the fourth quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 3,468,651 shares of the industrial products company’s stock valued at $349,085,000 after acquiring an additional 217,867 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 92.37% of the company’s stock.

About Pentair

Pentair plc provides various water solutions in the United States, Western Europe, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, Canada, and Japan. The company operates through three segments: Flow, Water Solutions, and Pool. The Flow segment designs, manufactures, and sells fluid treatment and pump products and systems, including pressure vessels, gas recovery solutions, membrane bioreactors, wastewater reuse systems and advanced membrane filtration, separation systems, water disposal pumps, water supply pumps, fluid transfer pumps, turbine pumps, solid handling pumps, and agricultural spray nozzles for fluid delivery, ion exchange, desalination, food and beverage, separation technologies in the oil and gas industry, residential and municipal wells, water treatment, wastewater solids handling, pressure boosting, circulation and transfer, fire suppression, flood control, agricultural irrigation, and crop spray in residential, commercial, and industrial markets.