Priority Technology (NASDAQ:PRTH) Shares Gap Up After Analyst Upgrade

Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRTH)’s share price gapped up before the market opened on Friday after Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised their price target on the stock from $9.00 to $10.00. The stock had previously closed at $8.35, but opened at $8.57. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods currently has a market perform rating on the stock. Priority Technology shares last traded at $8.87, with a volume of 38,860 shares trading hands.

Several other research analysts also recently weighed in on PRTH. Lake Street Capital upped their target price on shares of Priority Technology from $8.00 to $13.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. B. Riley upped their price objective on Priority Technology from $11.00 to $13.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, September 23rd.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CAO Rajiv Kumar sold 10,000 shares of Priority Technology stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $6.13, for a total transaction of $61,300.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 11,587 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $71,028.31. The trade was a 46.32 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, insider Sean Kiewiet sold 4,483 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, October 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $6.00, for a total value of $26,898.00. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 1,065,158 shares in the company, valued at $6,390,948. The trade was a 0.42 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 48,302 shares of company stock valued at $286,501 over the last 90 days. Insiders own 76.30% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in PRTH. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Priority Technology by 25.7% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 762,631 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,494,000 after purchasing an additional 156,044 shares during the period. Rebalance LLC bought a new stake in Priority Technology during the 3rd quarter valued at $4,822,000. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. purchased a new position in shares of Priority Technology in the 1st quarter valued at $164,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC purchased a new position in shares of Priority Technology in the 2nd quarter valued at $202,000. Finally, State Board of Administration of Florida Retirement System purchased a new stake in shares of Priority Technology during the 1st quarter worth $91,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 11.52% of the company’s stock.

Priority Technology Price Performance

The firm has a market capitalization of $678.32 million, a P/E ratio of -21.12 and a beta of 1.01. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $6.59 and its 200 day simple moving average is $5.46.

Priority Technology Company Profile

Priority Technology Holdings, Inc operates as a payment technology company in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB) Payments, Business-To-Business (B2B) Payments, and Enterprise Payments. It offers SMB payments processing solutions for B2C transactions through independent sales organizations, financial institutions, independent software vendors, and other referral partners through its MX product suite, which includes MX Connect and MX Merchant products, such as MX Insights, MX Storefront, MX Retail, MX Invoice, MX B2B and ACH.com, and others, which provides flexible and customizable set of business applications that helps to manage critical business work functions and revenue performance to resellers and merchant clients using core payment processing.