Earnest Partners LLC Decreases Holdings in Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR)

Earnest Partners LLC lowered its stake in shares of Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR) by 2.6% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 3,765,861 shares of the company’s stock after selling 99,643 shares during the period. Earnest Partners LLC owned 0.13% of Equinor ASA worth $107,553,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of EQNR. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its stake in shares of Equinor ASA by 2,359.3% in the first quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 6,783,338 shares of the company’s stock worth $183,354,000 after purchasing an additional 6,507,511 shares in the last quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. grew its stake in Equinor ASA by 9.1% in the 4th quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 3,432,242 shares of the company’s stock valued at $108,596,000 after buying an additional 285,662 shares in the last quarter. CIBC Private Wealth Group LLC raised its holdings in Equinor ASA by 39.3% during the 4th quarter. CIBC Private Wealth Group LLC now owns 1,045,722 shares of the company’s stock valued at $33,105,000 after acquiring an additional 295,162 shares during the period. Cambiar Investors LLC lifted its position in shares of Equinor ASA by 3.9% during the second quarter. Cambiar Investors LLC now owns 572,243 shares of the company’s stock worth $16,343,000 after acquiring an additional 21,469 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Bank of New York Mellon Corp boosted its holdings in shares of Equinor ASA by 0.6% in the second quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 479,848 shares of the company’s stock worth $13,704,000 after acquiring an additional 2,894 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 5.51% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of analysts recently issued reports on EQNR shares. TD Cowen decreased their price objective on Equinor ASA from $30.00 to $28.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, July 10th. Morgan Stanley cut Equinor ASA from an “equal weight” rating to an “underweight” rating and decreased their price target for the company from $30.50 to $25.80 in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. UBS Group upgraded shares of Equinor ASA from a “sell” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 8th. Finally, StockNews.com cut shares of Equinor ASA from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 29th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $26.90.

Equinor ASA Trading Down 2.4 %

Shares of EQNR opened at $24.80 on Thursday. Equinor ASA has a 1-year low of $24.08 and a 1-year high of $34.73. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53, a current ratio of 1.53 and a quick ratio of 1.43. The company has a market capitalization of $69.25 billion, a P/E ratio of 7.68, a P/E/G ratio of 3.48 and a beta of 0.83. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $26.25 and its 200 day simple moving average is $27.17.

Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 24th. The company reported $0.84 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.81 by $0.03. Equinor ASA had a return on equity of 20.65% and a net margin of 9.11%. The business had revenue of $25.54 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $25.93 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $0.74 EPS. Sell-side analysts forecast that Equinor ASA will post 3.3 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Equinor ASA Cuts Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a — dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, August 28th. Investors of record on Monday, August 19th were issued a $0.35 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, August 19th. This represents a yield of 4.1%. Equinor ASA’s payout ratio is currently 36.84%.

Equinor ASA Company Profile

Equinor ASA, an energy company, engages in the exploration, production, transportation, refining, and marketing of petroleum and other forms of energy in Norway and internationally. It operates through Exploration & Production Norway; Exploration & Production International; Exploration & Production USA; Marketing, Midstream & Processing; Renewables; and Other segments.