Signature Estate & Investment Advisors LLC Decreases Stake in The AES Corporation $AES

Signature Estate & Investment Advisors LLC lowered its position in The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) by 7.0% in the first quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 13,090 shares of the utilities provider’s stock after selling 992 shares during the quarter. Signature Estate & Investment Advisors LLC’s holdings in AES were worth $163,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in AES. Cetera Investment Advisers lifted its stake in AES by 51.4% in the fourth quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 147,609 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $1,900,000 after acquiring an additional 50,125 shares during the last quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC lifted its position in shares of AES by 2.1% during the 4th quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 79,261 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $1,020,000 after buying an additional 1,629 shares during the last quarter. Lazard Asset Management LLC lifted its position in shares of AES by 18.4% during the 4th quarter. Lazard Asset Management LLC now owns 238,502 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $3,069,000 after buying an additional 37,034 shares during the last quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. lifted its position in shares of AES by 4.7% during the 4th quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 64,809 shares of the utilities provider’s stock worth $834,000 after buying an additional 2,908 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Maven Securities LTD purchased a new stake in shares of AES during the 4th quarter worth approximately $322,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 93.13% of the company’s stock.

AES Stock Performance

Shares of AES opened at $12.74 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.46, a quick ratio of 0.74 and a current ratio of 0.82. The stock has a market capitalization of $9.07 billion, a P/E ratio of 8.97, a P/E/G ratio of 1.52 and a beta of 0.92. The company’s fifty day moving average is $13.05 and its two-hundred day moving average is $11.72. The AES Corporation has a 1 year low of $9.46 and a 1 year high of $20.30.

AES (NYSE:AES) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 31st. The utilities provider reported $0.51 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.39 by $0.12. The company had revenue of $2.86 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.97 billion. AES had a net margin of 8.42% and a return on equity of 19.02%. AES’s revenue was down 3.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $0.38 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts predict that The AES Corporation will post 1.93 earnings per share for the current year.

AES Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, August 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, August 1st were paid a $0.176 dividend. This represents a $0.70 annualized dividend and a yield of 5.5%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, August 1st. AES’s payout ratio is currently 49.30%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have recently weighed in on AES shares. Argus restated a “hold” rating on shares of AES in a research report on Tuesday, May 27th. Barclays boosted their price objective on shares of AES from $12.00 to $14.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 22nd. Jefferies Financial Group downgraded shares of AES from a “hold” rating to an “underperform” rating and reduced their price objective for the stock from $10.00 to $9.00 in a research report on Tuesday, May 20th. Wall Street Zen raised shares of AES from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Saturday, August 2nd. Finally, Susquehanna lifted their target price on shares of AES from $15.00 to $16.00 and gave the company a “positive” rating in a report on Monday, July 21st. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have given a Buy rating, two have given a Hold rating and two have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $24.67.

About AES

The AES Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified power generation and utility company in the United States and internationally. The company owns and/or operates power plants to generate and sell power to customers, such as utilities, industrial users, and other intermediaries; owns and/or operates utilities to generate or purchase, distribute, transmit, and sell electricity to end-user customers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental sectors; and generates and sells electricity on the wholesale market.