Stock Buyback Program Approved by Shell (NYSE:SHEL)

Shell (NYSE:SHEL) declared that its board has approved a share buyback plan on Friday, May 2nd, RTT News reports. The company plans to repurchase $3.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the energy company to buy up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are typically an indication that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages recently issued reports on SHEL. Scotiabank decreased their price objective on shares of Shell from $75.00 to $70.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, April 11th. Morgan Stanley raised Shell from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their price target for the stock from $66.50 to $79.80 in a report on Tuesday, January 7th. TD Securities reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Shell in a research note on Friday, April 4th. TD Cowen dropped their target price on shares of Shell from $82.00 to $76.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, April 8th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Shell in a report on Wednesday, March 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, eleven have given a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Shell presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $77.73.

Shell Stock Up 2.9 %

Shares of NYSE SHEL opened at $66.67 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 1.35, a quick ratio of 1.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.36. The business has a 50-day moving average of $66.91 and a 200-day moving average of $65.90. The firm has a market capitalization of $200.55 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.28, a PEG ratio of 0.98 and a beta of 0.27. Shell has a 12 month low of $58.55 and a 12 month high of $74.61.

Shell (NYSE:SHEL) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, May 2nd. The energy company reported $1.84 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.54 by $0.30. The firm had revenue of $69.23 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $79.18 billion. Shell had a return on equity of 12.75% and a net margin of 5.57%. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $2.40 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts expect that Shell will post 7.67 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About Shell

Shell plc operates as an energy and petrochemical company Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, the United States, and Rest of the Americas. The company operates through Integrated Gas, Upstream, Marketing, Chemicals and Products, and Renewables and Energy Solutions segments. It explores for and extracts crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids; markets and transports oil and gas; produces gas-to-liquids fuels and other products; and operates upstream and midstream infrastructure to deliver gas to market.