The time has not yet come to remove your chips from the table: Mueller Water Products Inc. (MWA)

Mueller Water Products Inc. (NYSE: MWA) stock jumped 1.41% on Thursday to $13.71 against a previous-day closing price of $13.52. 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 Industrial Machinery company that operates in wider Industrials sector, reached to the highest price of $13.72 whereas the lowest price it dropped to was $13.48. The 52-week range on MWA shows that it touched its highest point at $14.98 and its lowest point at $9.90 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $15.69. With its current market cap of 2.14 billion, MWA has annualized dividend of $0.24 while the current yield stands at 1.78%. Beta for the stock currently stands at 1.28.

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 MWA was down-trending over the past week, with a drop of -0.72%, but this was up by 5.87% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -1.15% while six-month performance rose 16.78%. The stock gained 17.58% in the past year, while it has gained 27.42% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for MWA yields 0.49 with Next year EPS estimates of 0.77. For the next quarter, that number is 0.20. This implies an EPS growth rate of 9.60% for this year and 15.22% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 10.00% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of 7.60%.

Float and Shares Shorts:

At present, 156.30 million MWA shares are outstanding with a float of 153.48 million shares on hand for trading. On May 14, 2023, short shares totaled 3.65 million, which was 2.33% higher than short shares on Apr 13, 2023. In addition to MA as the firm’s Mastercard Incorporated, MFA serves as its MFA Financial, Inc.

Institutional Ownership:

Through their ownership of 95.38% of MWA’s outstanding shares, institutional investors have majority control over the company. Other institutions hold 63.90% of MWA, in contrast to 60.26% held by mutual funds. Shares owned by individuals account for 31.97%. As the largest shareholder in MWA with 9.37% of the stake, Impax Asset Management Ltd. holds 14,645,826 shares worth 14,645,826. A second-largest stockholder of MWA, The Vanguard Group, Inc., holds 14,387,932 shares, controlling over 9.21% of the firm’s shares. Nuance Investments LLC is the third largest shareholder in MWA, holding 13,544,119 shares or 8.67% stake. With a 4.85% stake in MWA, the BNP Paribas Funds – Aqua is the largest stakeholder. A total of 7,584,925 shares are owned by the mutual fund manager. The BNP Paribas Aqua, which owns about 4.52% of MWA stock, is the second-largest Mutual Fund holder. It holds 7,060,901 shares valued at 94.62 million. Nuance Mid Cap Value Fund holds 4.50% of the stake in MWA, owning 7,033,038 shares worth 94.24 million.

An Overview of Recent Financials:

Understanding a company as a customer does not mean you will understand it as an investor. The wise investor uses quantitative research to analyze metrics such as revenue, net income, and earnings. In its fiscal quarter reported on Mar 30, 2023, MWA reported revenue of $333.20M and operating income of $37.50M. The EBITDA in the recently reported quarter was $38.40M and diluted EPS was $0.17.

Analysts Ratings:

Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for MWA since 0 analysts follow the stock currently. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential. With MWA analysts setting a high price target of $19.00 and a low target of $14.00, the average target price over the next 12 months is $15.93. Based on these targets, MWA could surge 38.58% to reach the target high and rise by 2.12% to reach the target low. Reaching the average price target will result in a growth of 16.19% 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.

Summary of Insider Activity:

Insiders traded MWA stock several times over the past three months with 0 Buys and 0 Sells. In these transactions, 0 shares were bought while 0 shares were sold. The number of buy transactions has increased to 29 while that of sell transactions has risen to 30 over the past year. The total number of shares bought during that period was 436,453 while 73,887 shares were sold.