Algert Global LLC reduced its stake in shares of Assured Guaranty Ltd. ( NYSE:AGO – Free Report ) by 50.1% during the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 10,943 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after selling 10,970 shares during the quarter. Algert Global LLC’s holdings in Assured Guaranty were worth $870,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. Other hedge funds have also modified their holdings of the company. River Road Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Assured Guaranty in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $53,026,000. AQR Capital Management LLC increased its position in shares of Assured Guaranty by 82.6% in the 2nd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 662,354 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $51,101,000 after purchasing an additional 299,658 shares during the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. increased its position in shares of Assured Guaranty by 37.4% in the 2nd quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 678,182 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $52,322,000 after purchasing an additional 184,621 shares during the last quarter. Royce & Associates LP increased its position in shares of Assured Guaranty by 13.2% in the 3rd quarter. Royce & Associates LP now owns 981,131 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $78,020,000 after purchasing an additional 114,308 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Millennium Management LLC increased its position in shares of Assured Guaranty by 293.6% in the 2nd quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 126,673 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $9,773,000 after purchasing an additional 94,486 shares during the last quarter. 92.22% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Analyst Ratings Changes Several equities research analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods boosted their target price on shares of Assured Guaranty from $92.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Monday, November 18th. UBS Group boosted their target price on shares of Assured Guaranty from $87.00 to $95.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday, November 18th. Finally, StockNews.com raised shares of Assured Guaranty from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, November 13th. Insider Buying and Selling at Assured Guaranty In other news, Director Yukiko Omura sold 3,599 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, September 26th. The shares were sold at an average price of $79.73, for a total value of $286,948.27. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 19,285 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,537,593.05. This represents a 15.73 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link . Also, CEO Dominic Frederico sold 31,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $80.01, for a total transaction of $2,480,310.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,380,119 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $110,423,321.19. This represents a 2.20 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here . 5.10% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders. Assured Guaranty Trading Down 0.1 % NYSE AGO opened at $93.28 on Friday. Assured Guaranty Ltd. has a one year low of $67.25 and a one year high of $96.60. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $85.86 and a 200-day simple moving average of $80.73. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 0.91. The firm has a market capitalization of $4.75 billion, a PE ratio of 7.25 and a beta of 1.10. Assured Guaranty ( NYSE:AGO – Get Free Report ) last posted its earnings results on Monday, November 11th. The financial services provider reported $2.42 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.42 by $1.00. The firm had revenue of $269.00 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $202.57 million. Assured Guaranty had a net margin of 70.37% and a return on equity of 11.58%. Assured Guaranty’s revenue was down 33.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $3.42 EPS. On average, equities analysts forecast that Assured Guaranty Ltd. will post 7.3 earnings per share for the current year. Assured Guaranty Dividend Announcement The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 6th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 22nd will be paid a dividend of $0.31 per share. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.33%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, November 22nd. Assured Guaranty’s payout ratio is 9.63%. About Assured Guaranty ( Free Report ) Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance, infrastructure, and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Assured Guaranty Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Assured Guaranty and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose to records Tuesday after Donald Trump’s latest talk about tariffs created only some ripples on Wall Street, even if they could roil the global economy were they to take effect. The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% to top the all-time high it set a couple weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 123 points, or 0.3%, to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6% as Microsoft and Big Tech led the way. Stock markets abroad mostly fell after President-elect Trump said he plans to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China once he takes office. But the movements were mostly modest. Stock indexes were down 0.1% in Shanghai and nearly flat in Hong Kong, while Canada’s main index edged down by less than 0.1%. Trump has often praised the use of tariffs , but investors are weighing whether his latest threat will actually become policy or is just an opening point for negotiations. For now, the market seems to be taking it more as the latter. The consequences otherwise for markets and the global economy could be painful. Unless the United States can prepare alternatives for the autos, energy products and other goods that come from Mexico, Canada and China, such tariffs would raise the price of imported items all at once and make households poorer, according to Carl Weinberg and Rubeela Farooqi, economists at High Frequency Economics. They would also hurt profit margins for U.S. companies, while raising the threat of retaliatory tariffs by other countries. And unlike tariffs in Trump’s first term, his latest proposal would affect products across the board. General Motors sank 9%, and Ford Motor fell 2.6% because both import automobiles from Mexico. Constellation Brands, which sells Modelo and other Mexican beer brands in the United States, dropped 3.3%. The value of the Mexican peso fell 1.8% against the U.S. dollar. Beyond the pain such tariffs would cause U.S. households and businesses, they could also push the Federal Reserve to slow or even halt its cuts to interest rates. The Fed had just begun easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high a couple months ago to offer support for the job market . While lower interest rates can boost the economy, they can also offer more fuel for inflation. “Many” officials at the Fed’s last meeting earlier this month said they should lower rates gradually, according to minutes of the meeting released Tuesday afternoon. The talk about tariffs overshadowed another mixed set of profit reports from U.S. retailers that answered few questions about how much more shoppers can keep spending. They’ll need to stay resilient after helping the economy avoid a recession, despite the high interest rates imposed by the Fed to get inflation under control. A report on Tuesday from the Conference Board said confidence among U.S. consumers improved in November, but not by as much as economists expected. Kohl’s tumbled 17% after its results for the latest quarter fell short of analysts’ expectations. CEO Tom Kingsbury said sales remain soft for apparel and footwear. A day earlier, Kingsbury said he plans to step down as CEO in January. Ashley Buchanan, CEO of Michaels and a retail veteran, will replace him. Best Buy fell 4.9% after likewise falling short of analysts’ expectations. Dick’s Sporting Goods topped forecasts for the latest quarter thanks to a strong back-to-school season, but its stock lost an early gain to fall 1.4%. Still, more stocks rose in the S&P 500 than fell. J.M. Smucker had one of the biggest gains and climbed 5.7% after topping analysts’ expectations for the latest quarter. CEO Mark Smucker credited strength for its Uncrustables, Meow Mix, Café Bustelo and Jif brands. Big Tech stocks also helped prop up U.S. indexes. Gains of 3.2% for Amazon and 2.2% for Microsoft were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. All told, the S&P 500 rose 34.26 points to 6,021.63. The Dow gained 123.74 to 44,860.31, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 119.46 to 19,174.30. In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady following their big drop from a day before driven by relief following Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary. The yield on the 10-year Treasury inched up to 4.29% from 4.28% late Monday, but it’s still well below the 4.41% level where it ended last week. In the crypto market, bitcoin continued to pull back after topping $99,000 for the first time late last week. It’s since dipped back toward $91,000, according to CoinDesk. It’s a sharp turnaround from the bonanza that initially took over the crypto market following Trump’s election. That boom had also appeared to have spilled into some corners of the stock market. Strategists at Barclays Capital pointed to stocks of unprofitable companies, along with other areas that can be caught up in bursts of optimism by smaller-pocketed “retail” investors. AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.
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GAME THREAD: West Virginia vs. Texas TechStock market today: Wall Street hits records despite tariff talk
Equity Residential stock underperforms Monday when compared to competitorsPORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Honey, they shrunk the catalogs. While retailers hope to go big this holiday season , customers may notice that the printed gift guides arriving in their mailboxes are smaller. Many of the millions of catalogs getting sent to U.S. homes were indeed scaled down to save on postage and paper, resulting in pint-sized editions. Lands’ End, Duluth Trading Company and Hammacher Schlemmer are among gift purveyors using smaller editions. Some retailers are saving even more money with postcards. Lisa Ayoob, a tech-savvy, online shopper in Portland, Maine, was surprised by the size of a recent catalog she received from outdoor apparel company Carbon2Cobalt. “It almost felt like it was a pamphlet compared to a catalog,” she said. Catalogs have undergone a steady recalibration over the years in response to technological changes and consumer behavior. The thick, heavy Sears and J.C. Penney catalogs that brought store displays to American living rooms slimmed down and gave way to targeted mailings once websites could do the same thing. Recent postal rate increases accelerated the latest shift to compact formats. The number of catalogs mailed each year dropped about 40% between 2006 to 2018, when an estimated 11.5 billion were mailed to homes, according to the trade group formerly known as the American Catalog Mailers Association. In a sign of the times, the group based in Washington rebranded itself in May as the American Commerce Marketing Association, reflecting a broadened focus. But don’t expect catalogs to go the way of dinosaurs yet. Defying predictions of doom, they have managed to remain relevant in the e-commerce era. Retail companies found that could treat catalogs with fewer pages as a marketing tool and include QR and promo codes to entice customers to browse online and complete a purchase. Despite no longer carrying an extended inventory of goods, catalogs are costly to produce and ship. But they hold their own in value because of growing digital advertising costs, helping retailers cut through the noise for consumers barraged by multi-format advertisements, industry officials say. In an unlikely twist, notable e-commerce companies like Amazon and home goods supplier Wayfair started distributing catalogs in recent years. Amazon began mailing a toy catalog in 2018. That was the same year Sears, which produced an annual Christmas Wish Book Wish starting in 1933, filed for bankruptc y. Fans of printed information may rejoice to hear that apparel retailer J.Crew relaunched its glossy catalog this year. Research shows that the hands-on experience of thumbing through a catalog leaves a greater impression on consumers, said Jonathan Zhang, a professor of marketing at Colorado State University. “The reason why these paper formats are so effective is that our human brains haven’t evolved as fast as technology and computers over the past 10 to 20 years. We retain more information when we read something on paper. That’s why paper books remain relevant,” Zhang said. “The psychology shows that three-dimensional, tactile experiences are more memorable.” Pint-sized presentations still can work, though, because the purpose of catalogs these days is simply to get customers’ attention, Zhang said. Conserving paper also works better with younger consumers who are worried about the holiday shopping season’s impact on the planet, he said. Postal increases are hastening changes. The latest round of postage hikes in July included the category with the 8.5-by-11-inch size that used to be ubiquitous for the catalog industry. Many retailers responded by reducing the size of catalogs, putting them in a lower-cost letter category, said Paul Miller, executive vice president and managing director of the American Commerce Marketing Association. One size, called a “slim jim,” measures 10.5 by 5.5 inches. But there other sizes. Some retailers have further reduced costs by mailing large postcards to consumers. Lands’ End, for one, is testing new compact formats to supplement its traditional catalogs. This year, that included folded glossy brochures and postcards, along with other formats, Chief Transformation Officer Angie Rieger said. Maine resident Ayoob said she understands why retailers still use catalogs even though she no longer is a fan of the format. These days, she prefers to browse for products on the internet, not by flipping through paper pages. “Everybody wants eyeballs. There’s so much out there -- so many websites, so many brands,” said Ayoob, who spent 35 years working in department stores and in the wholesale industry. Targeting customers at home is not a new concept. L.L. Bean was a pioneer of the mail-order catalog after its founder promoted his famous “Maine Hunting Shoe” to hunting license holders from out-of-state in 1912. The outdoor clothing and equipment company based in Freeport, Maine, is sticking to mailing out regular-sized catalogs for now. “By showcasing our icons, the catalog became an icon itself,” L.L. Bean spokesperson Amanda Hannah said. “Even as we invest more in our digital and brand marketing channels, the catalog retains a strong association with our brand, and is therefore an important part of our omni-channel strategy, especially for our loyal customers.”
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