West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE:WST) Now Covered by Analysts at Wolfe Research

Wolfe Research started coverage on shares of West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE:WST) in a research note released on Friday morning, Marketbeat.com reports. The firm issued a peer perform rating on the medical instruments supplier’s stock.

Separately, UBS Group upgraded shares of West Pharmaceutical Services from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $350.00 to $390.00 in a research note on Thursday. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, West Pharmaceutical Services has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $437.75.

West Pharmaceutical Services Trading Down 0.4 %

Shares of WST opened at $330.24 on Friday. West Pharmaceutical Services has a fifty-two week low of $265.00 and a fifty-two week high of $413.70. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $312.73 and a two-hundred day moving average of $311.84. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 3.00. The company has a market capitalization of $23.92 billion, a PE ratio of 49.00, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 25.16 and a beta of 1.01.

West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE:WST) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 24th. The medical instruments supplier reported $1.85 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.50 by $0.35. The firm had revenue of $746.90 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $709.62 million. West Pharmaceutical Services had a return on equity of 18.41% and a net margin of 17.37%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was down .1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $2.16 earnings per share. As a group, analysts forecast that West Pharmaceutical Services will post 6.64 EPS for the current year.

West Pharmaceutical Services Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 20th. Investors of record on Wednesday, November 13th were issued a dividend of $0.21 per share. This represents a $0.84 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.25%. This is a positive change from West Pharmaceutical Services’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.20. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, November 13th. West Pharmaceutical Services’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 12.46%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other West Pharmaceutical Services news, VP Charles Witherspoon sold 703 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, October 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $310.40, for a total transaction of $218,211.20. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now owns 1,253 shares in the company, valued at $388,931.20. This trade represents a 35.94 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. 0.53% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of West Pharmaceutical Services

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in WST. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC raised its stake in shares of West Pharmaceutical Services by 7.5% in the 2nd quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 1,195 shares of the medical instruments supplier’s stock valued at $394,000 after purchasing an additional 83 shares in the last quarter. Swedbank AB boosted its holdings in West Pharmaceutical Services by 1.6% in the second quarter. Swedbank AB now owns 4,975 shares of the medical instruments supplier’s stock worth $1,639,000 after purchasing an additional 80 shares during the period. Blue Trust Inc. increased its stake in West Pharmaceutical Services by 332.1% during the second quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 242 shares of the medical instruments supplier’s stock valued at $80,000 after purchasing an additional 186 shares during the last quarter. OFI Invest Asset Management increased its stake in West Pharmaceutical Services by 4,302.3% during the second quarter. OFI Invest Asset Management now owns 3,786 shares of the medical instruments supplier’s stock valued at $1,164,000 after purchasing an additional 3,700 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Raymond James & Associates boosted its holdings in shares of West Pharmaceutical Services by 9.0% in the 2nd quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 75,836 shares of the medical instruments supplier’s stock valued at $24,980,000 after buying an additional 6,256 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 93.90% of the company’s stock.

West Pharmaceutical Services Company Profile

West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells containment and delivery systems for injectable drugs and healthcare products in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in two segments, Proprietary Products and Contract-Manufactured Products.