Insider Selling: Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) CEO Sells $3,124,800.00 in Stock

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) CEO Dominic Frederico sold 40,000 shares of Assured Guaranty stock in a transaction on Thursday, June 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $78.12, for a total transaction of $3,124,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 1,410,824 shares in the company, valued at approximately $110,213,570.88. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink.

Assured Guaranty Stock Down 1.1 %

Shares of AGO stock opened at $75.65 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.30, a current ratio of 0.97 and a quick ratio of 0.97. The company has a market capitalization of $4.12 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 5.84 and a beta of 1.10. The company’s fifty day moving average price is $77.23 and its 200-day moving average price is $80.32. Assured Guaranty Ltd. has a one year low of $53.14 and a one year high of $96.60.

Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, May 7th. The financial services provider reported $1.96 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.41 by $0.55. The company had revenue of $245.00 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $194.78 million. Assured Guaranty had a net margin of 57.45% and a return on equity of 12.48%. Assured Guaranty’s revenue for the quarter was down 13.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.12 EPS. Sell-side analysts expect that Assured Guaranty Ltd. will post 6.45 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Assured Guaranty Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, May 29th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, May 15th were issued a $0.31 dividend. This is an increase from Assured Guaranty’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.64%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Tuesday, May 14th. Assured Guaranty’s payout ratio is currently 9.58%.

Institutional Trading of Assured Guaranty

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of AGO. Norges Bank bought a new stake in Assured Guaranty in the 4th quarter valued at $41,609,000. LRI Investments LLC bought a new stake in shares of Assured Guaranty in the 1st quarter worth about $25,554,000. Invesco Ltd. increased its holdings in shares of Assured Guaranty by 63.9% in the 3rd quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 406,987 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $24,631,000 after buying an additional 158,638 shares during the last quarter. Reinhart Partners LLC. increased its holdings in shares of Assured Guaranty by 8.2% in the 4th quarter. Reinhart Partners LLC. now owns 893,788 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $66,882,000 after buying an additional 67,613 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AQR Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Assured Guaranty by 27.4% in the 3rd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 273,395 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $16,546,000 after buying an additional 58,873 shares during the last quarter. 92.22% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several brokerages have recently commented on AGO. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods decreased their price objective on shares of Assured Guaranty from $92.00 to $87.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, May 31st. UBS Group raised their price objective on shares of Assured Guaranty from $64.00 to $102.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, March 1st.

Assured Guaranty Company Profile

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.