NBC Securities Inc. Boosts Holdings in The AES Co. (NYSE:AES)

NBC Securities Inc. boosted its stake in The AES Co. (NYSE:AES) by 10.9% in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 12,136 shares of the utilities provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 1,188 shares during the period. NBC Securities Inc.’s holdings in AES were worth $243,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in AES. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its position in shares of AES by 2.2% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 89,725,232 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $1,608,773,000 after purchasing an additional 1,929,523 shares during the period. Capital International Investors grew its position in shares of AES by 11.4% during the first quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 77,641,395 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $1,392,110,000 after acquiring an additional 7,969,594 shares during the last quarter. M&G Plc acquired a new position in shares of AES in the 1st quarter valued at $123,272,000. Bank of New York Mellon Corp raised its position in AES by 3.1% in the 2nd quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 4,769,785 shares of the utilities provider’s stock valued at $83,805,000 after purchasing an additional 141,565 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Douglas Lane & Associates LLC boosted its stake in AES by 2.7% during the 1st quarter. Douglas Lane & Associates LLC now owns 3,559,999 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $63,831,000 after purchasing an additional 91,990 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 93.13% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently commented on AES. Jefferies Financial Group started coverage on shares of AES in a report on Wednesday, September 11th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $20.00 target price for the company. Evercore ISI raised AES to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, September 18th. Finally, Barclays dropped their target price on AES from $23.00 to $22.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, July 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating, six have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $22.43.

AES Trading Up 1.3 %

NYSE:AES opened at $17.47 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $12.42 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.26 and a beta of 1.07. The AES Co. has a 1 year low of $13.55 and a 1 year high of $22.21. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $17.99 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $18.34. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.63, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 0.97.

AES (NYSE:AES) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, August 1st. The utilities provider reported $0.38 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.36 by $0.02. AES had a net margin of 6.07% and a return on equity of 32.74%. The firm had revenue of $2.94 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $0.21 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down 2.8% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that The AES Co. will post 1.9 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

AES Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 15th. Investors of record on Friday, November 1st will be issued a dividend of $0.1725 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 1st. This represents a $0.69 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.95%. AES’s dividend payout ratio is presently 95.83%.

About AES

The AES Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified power generation and utility company in the United States and internationally. The company owns and/or operates power plants to generate and sell power to customers, such as utilities, industrial users, and other intermediaries; owns and/or operates utilities to generate or purchase, distribute, transmit, and sell electricity to end-user customers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental sectors; and generates and sells electricity on the wholesale market.