Stock Traders Buy High Volume of Plains All American Pipeline Call Options (NYSE:PAA)

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (NYSE:PAA) was the recipient of some unusual options trading on Tuesday. Stock traders purchased 8,315 call options on the company. This is an increase of approximately 40% compared to the average daily volume of 5,953 call options.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Plains All American Pipeline

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Waverly Advisors LLC increased its position in shares of Plains All American Pipeline by 2.5% during the fourth quarter. Waverly Advisors LLC now owns 51,565 shares of the pipeline company’s stock valued at $881,000 after purchasing an additional 1,237 shares during the period. Nuveen Asset Management LLC increased its holdings in Plains All American Pipeline by 116.7% in the 4th quarter. Nuveen Asset Management LLC now owns 245,345 shares of the pipeline company’s stock valued at $4,190,000 after buying an additional 132,142 shares during the period. Morse Asset Management Inc raised its stake in shares of Plains All American Pipeline by 2.5% in the 4th quarter. Morse Asset Management Inc now owns 46,500 shares of the pipeline company’s stock valued at $794,000 after buying an additional 1,150 shares in the last quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of Plains All American Pipeline by 8.6% during the 4th quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 15,297,594 shares of the pipeline company’s stock worth $261,283,000 after acquiring an additional 1,211,286 shares during the period. Finally, Eagle Global Advisors LLC boosted its position in shares of Plains All American Pipeline by 8.3% during the 4th quarter. Eagle Global Advisors LLC now owns 4,666,185 shares of the pipeline company’s stock valued at $79,698,000 after acquiring an additional 358,350 shares in the last quarter. 41.78% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

PAA has been the topic of several research reports. Scotiabank reaffirmed a “sector outperform” rating and issued a $23.00 target price on shares of Plains All American Pipeline in a research report on Friday, January 10th. Raymond James raised their price objective on shares of Plains All American Pipeline from $23.00 to $24.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 28th. Wolfe Research raised shares of Plains All American Pipeline from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $22.00 target price for the company in a research report on Friday, January 10th. Barclays raised their price target on shares of Plains All American Pipeline from $18.00 to $19.00 and gave the company an “underweight” rating in a report on Thursday, January 16th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada reiterated a “sector perform” rating and issued a $19.00 price objective on shares of Plains All American Pipeline in a report on Friday, November 15th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have issued a hold rating, six have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Plains All American Pipeline presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $20.21.

Plains All American Pipeline Stock Performance

Shares of PAA stock traded down $0.88 during trading hours on Tuesday, reaching $19.08. 3,669,621 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 4,250,488. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $19.35 and a 200-day moving average price of $18.16. The stock has a market capitalization of $13.42 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.13 and a beta of 1.65. The company has a quick ratio of 0.92, a current ratio of 1.01 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.64. Plains All American Pipeline has a fifty-two week low of $16.21 and a fifty-two week high of $21.00.

Plains All American Pipeline Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Friday, January 31st were given a dividend of $0.38 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, January 31st. This is an increase from Plains All American Pipeline’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.32. This represents a $1.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 7.97%. Plains All American Pipeline’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 208.22%.

Plains All American Pipeline Company Profile

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P., through its subsidiaries, engages in the pipeline transportation, terminaling, storage, and gathering of crude oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) in the United States and Canada. The company operates through two segments, Crude Oil and NGL. The Crude Oil segment offers gathering and transporting crude oil through pipelines, gathering systems, trucks, and on barges or railcars.