Cabot (NYSE:CBT) Posts Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.02 EPS

Cabot (NYSE:CBT) posted its earnings results on Monday. The specialty chemicals company reported $1.76 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.74 by $0.02, Zacks reports. Cabot had a return on equity of 26.60% and a net margin of 9.51%. Cabot updated its FY 2025 guidance to 7.400-7.800 EPS.

Cabot Stock Performance

NYSE:CBT opened at $88.30 on Wednesday. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $94.83 and a 200-day moving average price of $101.99. The company has a market cap of $4.79 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.10, a PEG ratio of 0.74 and a beta of 1.19. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.68, a quick ratio of 1.36 and a current ratio of 2.08. Cabot has a fifty-two week low of $70.63 and a fifty-two week high of $117.46.

Cabot Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, March 14th. Shareholders of record on Friday, February 28th will be issued a $0.43 dividend. This represents a $1.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.95%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, February 28th. Cabot’s dividend payout ratio is 25.52%.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Hobart Kalkstein sold 34,759 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 11th. The stock was sold at an average price of $115.23, for a total transaction of $4,005,279.57. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 50,627 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,833,749.21. This represents a 40.71 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CAO Lisa M. Dumont sold 865 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $111.74, for a total value of $96,655.10. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,742 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,088,571.08. The trade was a 8.15 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 50,190 shares of company stock worth $5,751,534. 3.03% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes

CBT has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered Cabot from a “neutral” rating to an “underweight” rating and set a $105.00 target price on the stock. in a report on Monday, November 11th. Mizuho decreased their price objective on Cabot from $122.00 to $110.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, January 7th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Cabot currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $102.00.

Cabot announced that its board has authorized a share repurchase plan on Tuesday, December 3rd that authorizes the company to buyback 10,000,000 shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the specialty chemicals company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

About Cabot

Cabot Corporation operates as a specialty chemicals and performance materials company. The company operates through two segments, Reinforcement Materials and Performance Chemicals. It offers reinforcing carbons that are used in tires as a rubber reinforcing agent and performance additive, as well as in industrial products, such as hoses, belts, extruded profiles, and molded goods; and engineered elastomer composites solutions.