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

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) was the recipient of some unusual options trading on Friday. Stock traders bought 76,468 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of approximately 86% compared to the average daily volume of 41,201 call options.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have commented on CLF shares. Morgan Stanley decreased their price objective on shares of Cleveland-Cliffs from $13.00 to $11.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Monday. StockNews.com lowered Cleveland-Cliffs from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Thursday, November 7th. Citigroup decreased their target price on Cleveland-Cliffs from $12.50 to $11.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. Glj Research raised shares of Cleveland-Cliffs from a “sell” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $14.27 price objective on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, January 7th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group started coverage on shares of Cleveland-Cliffs in a research report on Monday, December 2nd. They set a “buy” rating and a $16.00 target price for the company. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating, four have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Cleveland-Cliffs currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $16.68.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cleveland-Cliffs

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Sanctuary Advisors LLC bought a new position in Cleveland-Cliffs during the second quarter valued at $1,010,000. Daymark Wealth Partners LLC raised its holdings in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 19.7% in the third quarter. Daymark Wealth Partners LLC now owns 21,435 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $274,000 after buying an additional 3,535 shares during the period. Hexagon Capital Partners LLC lifted its stake in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 594.1% during the 3rd quarter. Hexagon Capital Partners LLC now owns 11,800 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $151,000 after acquiring an additional 10,100 shares during the last quarter. Unison Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in Cleveland-Cliffs in the third quarter worth $788,000. Finally, Carnegie Investment Counsel increased its stake in Cleveland-Cliffs by 12.4% in the 3rd quarter. Carnegie Investment Counsel now owns 101,267 shares of the mining company’s stock worth $1,293,000 after buying an additional 11,210 shares during the period. 67.68% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Cleveland-Cliffs Stock Down 1.6 %

CLF stock traded down $0.18 during trading on Friday, hitting $10.49. 3,934,447 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 12,687,958. Cleveland-Cliffs has a 1 year low of $8.99 and a 1 year high of $22.97. The stock has a market cap of $5.18 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -10.81 and a beta of 1.96. The firm’s 50 day moving average is $10.35 and its two-hundred day moving average is $12.00. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53, a current ratio of 1.85 and a quick ratio of 0.55.

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, November 4th. The mining company reported ($0.33) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.31) by ($0.02). Cleveland-Cliffs had a negative return on equity of 0.59% and a negative net margin of 2.31%. The firm had revenue of $4.57 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $4.72 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $0.54 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was down 18.5% on a year-over-year basis. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Cleveland-Cliffs will post -0.69 EPS for the current year.

Cleveland-Cliffs Company Profile

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.