Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD Sells 183,954 Shares of Shell plc (NYSE:SHEL)

Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lowered its position in Shell plc (NYSE:SHEL) by 2.6% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 6,900,669 shares of the energy company’s stock after selling 183,954 shares during the period. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD owned about 0.23% of Shell worth $432,334,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Harvest Investment Services LLC bought a new stake in shares of Shell in the fourth quarter worth $200,000. TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. increased its position in Shell by 2.3% during the fourth quarter. TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. now owns 153,270 shares of the energy company’s stock worth $9,604,000 after buying an additional 3,430 shares during the last quarter. Transce3nd LLC bought a new stake in Shell in the 4th quarter valued at $34,000. MML Investors Services LLC lifted its stake in shares of Shell by 18.3% during the 4th quarter. MML Investors Services LLC now owns 149,983 shares of the energy company’s stock worth $9,396,000 after buying an additional 23,162 shares during the last quarter. Finally, First Trust Advisors LP boosted its holdings in shares of Shell by 105.6% during the fourth quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 136,134 shares of the energy company’s stock worth $8,529,000 after acquiring an additional 69,929 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 28.60% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research analysts have issued reports on SHEL shares. Barclays restated an “overweight” rating on shares of Shell in a research report on Wednesday, March 26th. Wolfe Research upgraded Shell from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $80.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Friday, January 3rd. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Shell from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their target price for the company from $66.50 to $79.80 in a research report on Tuesday, January 7th. TD Securities reissued a “buy” rating on shares of Shell in a report on Friday, April 4th. Finally, TD Cowen lowered their price objective on Shell from $82.00 to $76.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, April 8th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, eleven have assigned a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $77.73.

Shell Stock Performance

Shell stock opened at $64.94 on Friday. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $67.13 and its 200-day moving average price is $66.01. Shell plc has a fifty-two week low of $58.55 and a fifty-two week high of $74.61. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.36, a quick ratio of 1.10 and a current ratio of 1.35. The stock has a market cap of $195.34 billion, a P/E ratio of 12.94, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.98 and a beta of 0.27.

Shell (NYSE:SHEL) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, January 30th. The energy company reported $1.20 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.74 by ($0.54). Shell had a return on equity of 12.75% and a net margin of 5.57%. On average, equities research analysts expect that Shell plc will post 7.67 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Shell Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, March 24th. Investors of record on Friday, February 14th were given a dividend of $0.716 per share. The ex-dividend date was Friday, February 14th. This represents a $2.86 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.41%. This is a boost from Shell’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.69. Shell’s payout ratio is currently 56.97%.

Shell Profile

Shell plc operates as an energy and petrochemical company Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, the United States, and Rest of the Americas. The company operates through Integrated Gas, Upstream, Marketing, Chemicals and Products, and Renewables and Energy Solutions segments. It explores for and extracts crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids; markets and transports oil and gas; produces gas-to-liquids fuels and other products; and operates upstream and midstream infrastructure to deliver gas to market.