Alto Ingredients Inc. (NASDAQ: ALTO) stock fell -1.22% on Friday to $3.24 against a previous-day closing price of $3.28. With 0.61 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 0.89 million shares. During the session, the Specialty Chemicals company that operates in wider Basic Materials sector, reached to the highest price of $3.2950 whereas the lowest price it dropped to was $3.2000. The 52-week range on ALTO shows that it touched its highest point at $7.37 and its lowest point at $2.61 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $9.00. Beta for the stock currently stands at 2.49.
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Price Performance and Earnings:
Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of ALTO was up-trending over the past week, with a rise of 2.86%, but this was up by 20.90% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -21.55% while six-month performance fell -19.60%. The stock lost -38.17% in the past year, while it has gained 12.50% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for ALTO yields 0.36 with Next year EPS estimates of 0.37. For the next quarter, that number is 0.08. This implies an EPS growth rate of 319.00% for this year and 331.20% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 20.00% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of 180.90%.
Float and Shares Shorts:
At present, 73.01 million ALTO shares are outstanding with a float of 70.47 million shares on hand for trading. On Oct 13, 2022, short shares totaled 3.3 million, which was 4.45% higher than short shares on Sep 14, 2022. In addition to Mr. William L. Jones as the firm’s Founder & Independent Chairman, Mr. Michael D. Kandris serves as its CEO, Pres, COO & Director.
Institutional Ownership:
Through their ownership of 54.41% of ALTO’s outstanding shares, institutional investors have majority control over the company. Other institutions hold 3.49% of ALTO, in contrast to 27.75% held by mutual funds. Shares owned by individuals account for 24.18%. As the largest shareholder in ALTO with 6.22% of the stake, BlackRock Fund Advisors holds 4,672,020 shares worth 4,672,020. A second-largest stockholder of ALTO, The Vanguard Group, Inc., holds 3,702,888 shares, controlling over 4.93% of the firm’s shares. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP is the third largest shareholder in ALTO, holding 2,534,233 shares or 3.37% stake. With a 3.13% stake in ALTO, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index is the largest stakeholder. A total of 2,354,281 shares are owned by the mutual fund manager. The Allspring Special Small Cap Value, which owns about 2.64% of ALTO stock, is the second-largest Mutual Fund holder. It holds 1,982,588 shares valued at 5.71 million. iShares Russell 2000 ETF holds 2.54% of the stake in ALTO, owning 1,909,401 shares worth 5.5 million.
Analysts Ratings:
Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for ALTO since 3 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 3 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 0 believe that the stock is worth HOLDING, 0 give it an OVERWEIGHT rating, and 0 thinks that it’s UNDERWEIGHT. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential. With ALTO analysts setting a high price target of $9.00 and a low target of $4.15, the average target price over the next 12 months is $6.38. Based on these targets, ALTO could surge 177.78% to reach the target high and rise by 28.09% to reach the target low. Reaching the average price target will result in a growth of 96.91% from current levels.
EPS: Estimates vs Actual
It is also common to use earnings estimates to evaluate a firm’s growth potential and to determine trading strategy. ALTO will report FY 2022 earnings on 03/08/2024. Analysts have provided yearly estimates in a range of -$0.15 being high and -$0.22 being low. For ALTO, this leads to a yearly average estimate of -$0.18. The earnings surprise of a firm occurs when the actual results change from the consensus earnings estimate. Alto Ingredients Inc. surprised analysts by -$0.39 when it reported -$0.39 EPS against a consensus estimate of $0.00. The surprise factor in the prior quarter was $0.20. Based on analyst estimates, the high estimate for the next quarter is -$0.01 and the low estimate is -$0.08. The average estimate for the next quarter is thus -$0.04.
Summary of Insider Activity:
Insiders traded ALTO stock several times over the past three months with 2 Buys and 0 Sells. In these transactions, 40,000 shares were bought while 0 shares were sold. The number of buy transactions has increased to 16 while that of sell transactions has risen to 6 over the past year. The total number of shares bought during that period was 487,637 while 144,592 shares were sold.
