Union Bancaire Privee UBP SA Invests $2.52 Million in The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC)

Union Bancaire Privee UBP SA purchased a new position in shares of The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm purchased 31,083 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,519,000.

Other hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC lifted its stake in Toro by 996,664.0% during the fourth quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 498,382 shares of the company’s stock worth $39,410,000 after purchasing an additional 498,332 shares during the last quarter. Nuance Investments LLC bought a new position in Toro during the third quarter worth $29,146,000. Worldquant Millennium Advisors LLC lifted its stake in Toro by 71.2% during the third quarter. Worldquant Millennium Advisors LLC now owns 217,739 shares of the company’s stock worth $18,885,000 after purchasing an additional 90,538 shares during the last quarter. KBC Group NV lifted its stake in Toro by 945.5% during the fourth quarter. KBC Group NV now owns 82,111 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,577,000 after purchasing an additional 74,257 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Benjamin Edwards Inc. lifted its stake in Toro by 6,995.4% during the third quarter. Benjamin Edwards Inc. now owns 74,005 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,418,000 after purchasing an additional 72,962 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 87.95% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

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

Toro Stock Performance

TTC stock opened at $79.95 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a quick ratio of 0.74 and a current ratio of 1.81. The stock has a market capitalization of $8.05 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.94 and a beta of 0.72. The Toro Company has a 1 year low of $76.95 and a 1 year high of $100.93. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $81.74 and its two-hundred day moving average is $84.27.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.95. The company had revenue of $1.08 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.09 billion. Toro had a return on equity of 27.25% and a net margin of 9.14%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.71 earnings per share. On average, research analysts predict that The Toro Company will post 4.41 EPS for the current year.

Toro Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, January 13th. Stockholders of record on Monday, December 23rd were issued a dividend of $0.38 per share. This represents a $1.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.90%. This is a positive change from Toro’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.36. The ex-dividend date was Monday, December 23rd. Toro’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 37.91%.

Toro declared that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase plan on Tuesday, December 10th that allows the company to buyback 4,000,000 outstanding shares. This buyback authorization allows the company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are usually a sign that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

Toro Profile

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.