U S Global Investors Inc. Acquires New Stake in Matson, Inc. (NYSE:MATX)

U S Global Investors Inc. acquired a new stake in Matson, Inc. (NYSE:MATX) during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor acquired 821 shares of the shipping company’s stock, valued at approximately $111,000.

A number of other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Pacer Advisors Inc. increased its stake in shares of Matson by 4,167,726.1% during the third quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 958,600 shares of the shipping company’s stock worth $136,716,000 after acquiring an additional 958,577 shares during the period. Wedge Capital Management L L P NC purchased a new stake in Matson in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $9,788,000. Caisse DE Depot ET Placement DU Quebec acquired a new position in Matson during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $6,735,000. International Assets Investment Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Matson by 14,162.0% during the 3rd quarter. International Assets Investment Management LLC now owns 42,786 shares of the shipping company’s stock worth $6,102,000 after buying an additional 42,486 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Nomura Asset Management Co. Ltd. purchased a new stake in shares of Matson in the third quarter valued at approximately $5,746,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 84.76% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

MATX has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Stifel Nicolaus increased their price objective on Matson from $150.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Wolfe Research cut shares of Matson from an “outperform” rating to a “peer perform” rating in a research note on Monday, November 18th. Finally, Stephens raised their price objective on shares of Matson from $165.00 to $175.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday.

Matson Stock Performance

MATX opened at $140.55 on Friday. Matson, Inc. has a 1-year low of $100.50 and a 1-year high of $169.12. The stock has a market cap of $4.67 billion, a P/E ratio of 11.69 and a beta of 1.05. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $139.52 and its 200 day simple moving average is $141.11. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14, a current ratio of 1.13 and a quick ratio of 1.13.

Matson (NYSE:MATX) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, February 25th. The shipping company reported $3.80 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.20 by $0.60. The company had revenue of $890.30 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $851.78 million. Matson had a return on equity of 16.89% and a net margin of 12.37%. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Matson, Inc. will post 13.27 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Matson Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, March 6th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, February 6th will be given a dividend of $0.34 per share. This represents a $1.36 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.97%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, February 6th. Matson’s payout ratio is currently 9.69%.

About Matson

Matson, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the provision of ocean transportation and logistics services. It operates through two segments, Ocean Transportation and Logistics. The Ocean Transportation segment offers ocean freight transportation services to the domestic non-contiguous economies of Hawaii, Japan, Alaska, and Guam, as well as to other island economies in Micronesia.