PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) Initiates Stock Repurchase Program

PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) declared that its board has approved a share buyback plan on Thursday, April 18th, RTT News reports. The company plans to repurchase $2.50 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the specialty chemicals company to purchase up to 8.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are generally a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

PPG has been the subject of a number of research reports. Evercore ISI cut shares of PPG Industries from an “outperform” rating to an “in-line” rating and set a $152.00 price target for the company. in a research report on Monday. Redburn Atlantic downgraded PPG Industries from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $160.00 target price for the company. in a report on Thursday, February 1st. Wells Fargo & Company upgraded PPG Industries from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their price target for the stock from $150.00 to $163.00 in a research note on Thursday, April 11th. StockNews.com cut PPG Industries from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday. Finally, KeyCorp lowered their target price on shares of PPG Industries from $164.00 to $162.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have issued a hold rating and nine have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, PPG Industries currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $155.50.

PPG Industries Stock Up 0.2 %

PPG stock opened at $131.13 on Tuesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $30.86 billion, a PE ratio of 22.15, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.56 and a beta of 1.28. The company has a fifty day moving average of $140.16 and a 200-day moving average of $138.99. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a current ratio of 1.47. PPG Industries has a one year low of $120.32 and a one year high of $152.89.

PPG Industries (NYSE:PPG) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Friday, April 19th. The specialty chemicals company reported $1.86 EPS for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.86. PPG Industries had a net margin of 7.74% and a return on equity of 23.13%. The firm had revenue of $4.31 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.43 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $1.82 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down 1.6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts expect that PPG Industries will post 8.46 EPS for the current year.

PPG Industries Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, June 12th. Investors of record on Friday, May 10th will be issued a dividend of $0.65 per share. This represents a $2.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.98%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, May 9th. PPG Industries’s dividend payout ratio is presently 43.92%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other PPG Industries news, CFO Vincent J. Morales sold 3,400 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, March 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $140.94, for a total transaction of $479,196.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 28,439 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,008,192.66. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. 0.56% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

PPG Industries Company Profile

PPG Industries, Inc manufactures and distributes paints, coatings, and specialty materials in the United States, Canada, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It operates through two segments, Performance Coatings and Industrial Coatings. The Performance Coatings segment offers coatings, solvents, adhesives, sealants, sundries, and software for automotive and commercial transport/fleet repair and refurbishing, light industrial coatings, and specialty coatings for signs; wood stains; paints, thermoplastics, pavement marking products, and other advanced technologies for pavement marking for government, commercial infrastructure, painting, and maintenance contractors; and coatings, sealants, transparencies, transparent armor, adhesives, engineered materials, and packaging and chemical management services for commercial, military, regional jet, and general aviation aircraft.