Cleveland-Cliffs Sees Unusually High Options Volume (NYSE:CLF)

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) was the recipient of unusually large options trading on Tuesday. Stock traders acquired 68,896 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 41% compared to the typical volume of 48,917 call options.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cleveland-Cliffs

A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 5.5% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 48,751,789 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $458,267,000 after acquiring an additional 2,556,332 shares during the period. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 13.7% in the 3rd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 25,893,879 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $330,665,000 after purchasing an additional 3,110,651 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP boosted its stake in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 3.1% in the 4th quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 21,247,426 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $199,724,000 after purchasing an additional 647,282 shares during the last quarter. Slate Path Capital LP increased its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 35.4% during the fourth quarter. Slate Path Capital LP now owns 16,208,000 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $152,355,000 after buying an additional 4,239,000 shares during the period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its stake in Cleveland-Cliffs by 3.2% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 8,466,747 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $79,611,000 after buying an additional 264,078 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 67.68% of the company’s stock.

Cleveland-Cliffs Trading Down 3.2 %

NYSE:CLF traded down $0.36 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $10.80. 36,558,582 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 16,524,256. Cleveland-Cliffs has a fifty-two week low of $8.99 and a fifty-two week high of $22.97. The company has a current ratio of 1.85, a quick ratio of 0.55 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53. The firm has a market capitalization of $5.33 billion, a P/E ratio of -11.13 and a beta of 1.96. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $10.24 and a 200-day simple moving average of $11.69.

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, February 24th. The mining company reported ($0.68) EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.65) by ($0.03). The business had revenue of $4.33 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.46 billion. Cleveland-Cliffs had a negative return on equity of 0.59% and a negative net margin of 2.31%. As a group, research analysts expect that Cleveland-Cliffs will post -0.79 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on CLF shares. The Goldman Sachs Group started coverage on Cleveland-Cliffs in a research note on Monday, December 2nd. They issued a “buy” rating and a $16.00 price target on the stock. Citigroup decreased their target price on Cleveland-Cliffs from $12.50 to $11.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. B. Riley reissued a “buy” rating on shares of Cleveland-Cliffs in a report on Tuesday, February 4th. Glj Research upgraded shares of Cleveland-Cliffs from a “sell” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $14.27 price target on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, January 7th. Finally, StockNews.com cut shares of Cleveland-Cliffs from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Thursday, November 7th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $16.68.

About Cleveland-Cliffs

Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest flat-rolled steel company and the largest iron ore pellet producer in North America. The company is vertically integrated from mining through iron making, steelmaking, rolling, finishing and downstream with hot and cold stamping of steel parts and components. The company was formerly known as Cliffs Natural Resources Inc and changed its name to Cleveland-Cliffs Inc in August 2017.