Principal Financial Group Inc. Sells 3,501 Shares of SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW)

Principal Financial Group Inc. reduced its position in shares of SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW) by 1.1% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 305,614 shares of the transportation company’s stock after selling 3,501 shares during the quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. owned about 0.69% of SkyWest worth $6,775,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in SKYW. BlackRock Inc. grew its position in shares of SkyWest by 0.8% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 8,050,838 shares of the transportation company’s stock worth $232,267,000 after buying an additional 63,516 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in shares of SkyWest by 4.4% during the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 5,929,452 shares of the transportation company’s stock worth $96,413,000 after buying an additional 251,492 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its position in shares of SkyWest by 1.9% during the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 3,375,623 shares of the transportation company’s stock worth $97,386,000 after buying an additional 64,082 shares during the period. Kopernik Global Investors LLC acquired a new position in shares of SkyWest during the 4th quarter worth about $41,792,000. Finally, State Street Corp grew its position in shares of SkyWest by 14.4% during the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,442,697 shares of the transportation company’s stock worth $70,472,000 after buying an additional 306,987 shares during the period. 79.94% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on SKYW shares. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft upgraded SkyWest from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $46.00 target price for the company in a research report on Thursday, June 15th. Evercore ISI boosted their price objective on SkyWest from $38.00 to $45.00 and gave the company an “in-line” rating in a research report on Monday. StockNews.com started coverage on SkyWest in a research report on Thursday, August 17th. They issued a “hold” rating for the company. Finally, Raymond James upgraded SkyWest from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $55.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Thursday. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, SkyWest currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $37.00.

SkyWest Trading Up 8.9 %

NASDAQ SKYW opened at $45.10 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -644.29, a PEG ratio of 7.26 and a beta of 1.95. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $41.39 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $30.95. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.27, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 1.01. SkyWest, Inc. has a 52 week low of $14.76 and a 52 week high of $45.98.

SkyWest (NASDAQ:SKYW) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 27th. The transportation company reported $0.35 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.46) by $0.81. SkyWest had a positive return on equity of 1.82% and a negative net margin of 0.19%. The company had revenue of $725.64 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $707.75 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $1.07 EPS. The business’s revenue was down 9.2% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts anticipate that SkyWest, Inc. will post 0.38 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

SkyWest Profile

SkyWest, Inc is the holding company for two scheduled passenger airline operations and an aircraft leasing company. SkyWest’s airline companies provide commercial air service in cities throughout North America with nearly 3,000 daily flights carrying more than 53 million passengers annually. SkyWest Airlines operates through partnerships with United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines.