Open Text Co. (NASDAQ:OTEX) Short Interest Down 28.3% in December

Open Text Co. (NASDAQ:OTEX) (TSE:OTC) saw a large drop in short interest in the month of December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totalling 4,960,000 shares, a drop of 28.3% from the November 30th total of 6,920,000 shares. Approximately 1.9% of the company’s stock are sold short. Based on an average trading volume of 613,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 8.1 days.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Open Text

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the business. Van ECK Associates Corp boosted its position in shares of Open Text by 15.9% during the 2nd quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 20,298 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $610,000 after acquiring an additional 2,791 shares during the last quarter. CIBC Asset Management Inc raised its holdings in Open Text by 2.6% in the 2nd quarter. CIBC Asset Management Inc now owns 1,022,387 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $30,681,000 after buying an additional 25,665 shares during the period. Cooke & Bieler LP lifted its position in Open Text by 18.6% in the second quarter. Cooke & Bieler LP now owns 5,536,769 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $166,325,000 after buying an additional 867,978 shares during the last quarter. National Bank of Canada FI boosted its stake in Open Text by 17.5% during the second quarter. National Bank of Canada FI now owns 4,021,893 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $120,390,000 after buying an additional 599,790 shares during the period. Finally, Letko Brosseau & Associates Inc. increased its position in shares of Open Text by 16.8% during the second quarter. Letko Brosseau & Associates Inc. now owns 3,929,040 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $117,956,000 after acquiring an additional 566,150 shares during the last quarter. 70.37% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Barclays decreased their price objective on shares of Open Text from $36.00 to $34.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a report on Friday, November 1st. UBS Group initiated coverage on Open Text in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. They set a “neutral” rating and a $32.00 price objective for the company. TD Securities reduced their price target on shares of Open Text from $40.00 to $38.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday. StockNews.com cut shares of Open Text from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada lowered Open Text from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and reduced their price objective for the stock from $45.00 to $33.00 in a research note on Friday, November 1st. Nine investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $35.55.

Open Text Stock Performance

Shares of OTEX traded up $0.17 during trading hours on Friday, reaching $28.31. 857,913 shares of the company traded hands, compared to its average volume of 651,100. The company has a quick ratio of 0.79, a current ratio of 0.79 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.54. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $30.06 and a 200-day moving average price of $30.97. The stock has a market capitalization of $7.49 billion, a P/E ratio of 16.36 and a beta of 1.11. Open Text has a 12-month low of $27.05 and a 12-month high of $45.47.

Open Text (NASDAQ:OTEX) (TSE:OTC) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 31st. The software maker reported $0.93 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.80 by $0.13. The company had revenue of $1.27 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.28 billion. Open Text had a net margin of 8.35% and a return on equity of 24.34%. The firm’s revenue was down 11.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $0.90 earnings per share. Equities analysts anticipate that Open Text will post 3.37 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Open Text Increases Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, December 20th. Investors of record on Friday, November 29th were paid a $0.262 dividend. This is an increase from Open Text’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.19. This represents a $1.05 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.70%. The ex-dividend date was Friday, November 29th. Open Text’s dividend payout ratio is currently 60.69%.

About Open Text

Open Text Corporation provides information management software and solutions. The company offers content services, which includes content collaboration and intelligent capture to records management, collaboration, e-signatures, and archiving; and operates experience cloud platform that provides customer experience and web content management, digital asset management, customer analytics, AI and insights, e-discovery, digital fax, omnichannel communications, secure messaging, and voice of customer, as well as customer journey, testing, and segmentation.