Van ECK Associates Corp Sells 15,448 Shares of The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC)

Van ECK Associates Corp cut its holdings in The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) by 8.4% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 168,617 shares of the company’s stock after selling 15,448 shares during the quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp’s holdings in Toro were worth $13,506,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of TTC. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Toro by 0.8% in the 4th quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 15,298 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,225,000 after purchasing an additional 120 shares during the period. Lindenwold Advisors INC lifted its stake in Toro by 2.8% in the third quarter. Lindenwold Advisors INC now owns 4,612 shares of the company’s stock valued at $400,000 after buying an additional 125 shares during the period. Northwest Financial Advisors boosted its holdings in Toro by 2.0% during the fourth quarter. Northwest Financial Advisors now owns 6,945 shares of the company’s stock worth $556,000 after buying an additional 139 shares during the last quarter. CWM LLC grew its position in shares of Toro by 15.5% during the 3rd quarter. CWM LLC now owns 1,063 shares of the company’s stock worth $92,000 after buying an additional 143 shares during the period. Finally, Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Toro by 1.0% in the 3rd quarter. Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC now owns 15,201 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,318,000 after acquiring an additional 146 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 87.95% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Separately, Raymond James lowered their target price on shares of Toro from $100.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, December 20th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $93.75.

Toro Trading Up 0.4 %

NYSE:TTC opened at $80.50 on Friday. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $82.38 and its 200-day simple moving average is $84.67. The Toro Company has a fifty-two week low of $76.95 and a fifty-two week high of $100.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a current ratio of 1.81 and a quick ratio of 0.74. The stock has a market capitalization of $8.10 billion, a PE ratio of 20.07 and a beta of 0.72.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 earnings per share for the quarter, meeting the consensus estimate of $0.95. Toro had a net margin of 9.14% and a return on equity of 27.25%. The company had revenue of $1.08 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.09 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.71 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts expect that The Toro Company will post 4.41 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Toro Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, January 13th. Stockholders of record on Monday, December 23rd were issued a $0.38 dividend. This represents a $1.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.89%. This is a positive change from Toro’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.36. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, December 23rd. Toro’s payout ratio is 37.91%.

Toro announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback plan on Tuesday, December 10th that permits the company to repurchase 4,000,000 outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the company to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are generally an indication that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

About Toro

The Toro Company designs, manufactures, markets, and sells professional turf maintenance equipment and services. It operates through two segments: Professional and Residential. The Professional segment offers turf and landscape equipment products, including sports fields and grounds mowing and maintenance equipment, golf course mowing and maintenance equipment, landscape contractor mowing equipment, landscape creation and renovation equipment, and other maintenance equipment; rental, specialty, and underground construction equipment, such as horizontal directional drills, walk and ride trenchers, stand-on skid steers, vacuum excavators, stump grinders, turf renovation products, asset locators, pipe rehabilitation solutions, materials handling equipment, and other after-market tools; and snow and ice management equipment, such as snowplows, as well as stand-on snow and ice removal equipment, such as snowplow, snow brush, and snow thrower attachments, salt and sand spreaders, and related parts and accessories for light and medium duty trucks, utility task vehicles, skid steers, and front-end loaders.