Short Interest in ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE:ASX) Drops By 47.5%

ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE:ASX) was the target of a significant drop in short interest during the month of July. As of July 15th, there was short interest totaling 9,531,995 shares, a drop of 47.5% from the June 30th total of 18,168,448 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 11,656,407 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 0.8 days. Currently, 0.6% of the shares of the company are sold short.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On ASE Technology

Institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Lazard Asset Management LLC lifted its position in ASE Technology by 11.1% in the 4th quarter. Lazard Asset Management LLC now owns 20,010,829 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $322,174,000 after buying an additional 1,997,888 shares during the last quarter. Morgan Stanley raised its stake in shares of ASE Technology by 14.3% during the fourth quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 10,607,588 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $170,782,000 after acquiring an additional 1,330,580 shares in the last quarter. Bank of America Corp DE raised its stake in shares of ASE Technology by 9.6% during the third quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 9,661,484 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $107,146,000 after acquiring an additional 846,300 shares in the last quarter. UBS Group AG lifted its stake in ASE Technology by 11.4% in the fourth quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 9,038,322 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $145,517,000 after purchasing an additional 922,692 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Rafferty Asset Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of ASE Technology by 50.9% in the 2nd quarter. Rafferty Asset Management LLC now owns 7,392,190 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $76,361,000 after acquiring an additional 2,491,918 shares during the last quarter. 6.80% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

ASX has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Wall Street Zen raised ASE Technology from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Sunday, April 5th. Zacks Research raised ASE Technology from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 5th. Finally, Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of ASE Technology in a research note on Tuesday, June 9th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, one has issued a Buy rating and one has issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Buy”.

ASE Technology Price Performance

NYSE:ASX traded down $2.30 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $31.63. 13,655,234 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 9,097,878. The firm has a market cap of $70.34 billion, a P/E ratio of 46.52 and a beta of 1.69. The company has a quick ratio of 0.89, a current ratio of 1.15 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $38.97 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $29.38. ASE Technology has a 52 week low of $9.30 and a 52 week high of $45.51.

ASE Technology (NYSE:ASX) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, April 29th. The semiconductor company reported $0.20 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.03. ASE Technology had a net margin of 7.03% and a return on equity of 13.48%. The business had revenue of $5.43 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $5.32 billion. On average, research analysts anticipate that ASE Technology will post 0.82 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

ASE Technology Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared an annual dividend, which will be paid on Friday, August 7th. Shareholders of record on Monday, July 6th will be given a dividend of $0.4171 per share. The ex-dividend date is Monday, July 6th. This is a positive change from ASE Technology’s previous annual dividend of $0.36. This represents a yield of 96.0%. ASE Technology’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 45.59%.

ASE Technology Company Profile

ASE Technology Holding Co, Ltd. (NYSE: ASX), commonly referred to as ASE, is a Taiwan-based provider of semiconductor assembly and testing services. The company focuses on back-end semiconductor manufacturing and related services that prepare integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices for final use. Its core activities include advanced IC packaging, final testing, wafer probing, and related engineering and supply-chain support for semiconductor customers.

ASE offers a range of products and technical capabilities designed to meet increasingly complex packaging and system-in-package requirements.