W. R. Berkley Co. (NYSE:WRB) Given Average Recommendation of “Hold” by Brokerages

Shares of W. R. Berkley Co. (NYSE:WRB) have earned a consensus recommendation of “Hold” from the thirteen research firms that are presently covering the company, Marketbeat reports. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, six have assigned a hold recommendation and six have issued a buy recommendation on the company. The average 12-month target price among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $64.28.

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on WRB. Evercore ISI upped their target price on W. R. Berkley from $57.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock an “in-line” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 22nd. UBS Group increased their price objective on shares of W. R. Berkley from $67.00 to $69.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 22nd. Truist Financial boosted their target price on shares of W. R. Berkley from $64.00 to $68.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, October 17th. Royal Bank of Canada raised their price target on shares of W. R. Berkley from $57.00 to $63.00 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 22nd. Finally, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods cut their price objective on W. R. Berkley from $59.00 to $58.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, October 22nd.

Institutional Trading of W. R. Berkley

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of WRB. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of W. R. Berkley by 48.6% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 15,121,001 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $857,814,000 after purchasing an additional 4,947,830 shares during the period. Janus Henderson Group PLC boosted its holdings in W. R. Berkley by 51.0% in the 3rd quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 11,321,958 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $642,294,000 after purchasing an additional 3,825,238 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of W. R. Berkley by 47.9% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,591,353 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $429,266,000 after buying an additional 2,459,073 shares during the period. Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of W. R. Berkley by 0.7% during the 2nd quarter. Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management LLC now owns 7,553,875 shares of the insurance provider’s stock worth $593,584,000 after buying an additional 54,530 shares during the last quarter. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its position in shares of W. R. Berkley by 55.1% during the 3rd quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 7,366,424 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $417,897,000 after buying an additional 2,616,227 shares during the period. 68.82% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

W. R. Berkley Stock Down 0.8 %

WRB opened at $58.52 on Thursday. The company has a fifty day moving average of $60.37 and a two-hundred day moving average of $58.05. The stock has a market capitalization of $22.30 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 14.99, a PEG ratio of 1.17 and a beta of 0.65. W. R. Berkley has a fifty-two week low of $47.18 and a fifty-two week high of $65.49. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a quick ratio of 0.36 and a current ratio of 0.36.

W. R. Berkley (NYSE:WRB) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Monday, October 21st. The insurance provider reported $0.93 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.92 by $0.01. The firm had revenue of $2.93 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.93 billion. W. R. Berkley had a return on equity of 20.41% and a net margin of 11.96%. W. R. Berkley’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $0.90 EPS. On average, research analysts expect that W. R. Berkley will post 3.96 earnings per share for the current year.

W. R. Berkley Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, December 27th. Shareholders of record on Monday, December 16th were paid a dividend of $0.08 per share. This represents a $0.32 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.55%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, December 16th. W. R. Berkley’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 8.21%.

W. R. Berkley Company Profile

W. R. Berkley Corporation, an insurance holding company, operates as a commercial lines writers worldwide. It operates in two segments, Insurance and Reinsurance & Monoline Excess. The Insurance segment underwrites commercial insurance business, including excess and surplus lines, admitted lines, and specialty personal lines.