Columbia Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLBK) Sees Significant Increase in Short Interest

Columbia Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLBK) saw a large growth in short interest in the month of March. As of March 31st, there was short interest totalling 2,770,000 shares, a growth of 6.5% from the March 15th total of 2,600,000 shares. Approximately 10.3% of the company’s shares are short sold. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 70,700 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 39.2 days.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Columbia Financial

A number of institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Columbia Financial by 0.3% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 3,630,379 shares of the company’s stock valued at $78,090,000 after purchasing an additional 10,519 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. raised its stake in shares of Columbia Financial by 2.2% in the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 2,779,807 shares of the company’s stock valued at $50,815,000 after purchasing an additional 60,316 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP raised its stake in shares of Columbia Financial by 3.5% in the 4th quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 1,683,066 shares of the company’s stock valued at $32,452,000 after purchasing an additional 56,155 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp raised its stake in Columbia Financial by 0.9% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 1,073,570 shares of the company’s stock worth $18,562,000 after acquiring an additional 9,448 shares during the period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its stake in Columbia Financial by 4.4% during the first quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 754,902 shares of the company’s stock worth $13,800,000 after acquiring an additional 31,722 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 12.72% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Separately, Piper Sandler reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $19.00 price objective on shares of Columbia Financial in a research note on Tuesday, March 26th.

Columbia Financial Stock Performance

NASDAQ:CLBK opened at $15.96 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.03 and a quick ratio of 1.03. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $16.60 and a two-hundred day moving average of $17.25. The stock has a market cap of $1.67 billion, a P/E ratio of 45.60 and a beta of 0.21. Columbia Financial has a 1-year low of $14.11 and a 1-year high of $20.46.

Columbia Financial (NASDAQ:CLBK) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, January 25th. The company reported $0.09 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.07 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $56.59 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $54.90 million. Columbia Financial had a net margin of 8.54% and a return on equity of 4.94%. On average, research analysts expect that Columbia Financial will post 0.22 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About Columbia Financial

Columbia Financial, Inc, a bank holding company, provides various financial services to businesses and consumers in the United States. Its deposit products include checking, interest-earning checking products and municipal, savings and club deposits, and money market accounts, as well as certificates of deposit.