Wall Street Zen Downgrades Littelfuse (NASDAQ:LFUS) to Hold

Littelfuse (NASDAQ:LFUS) was downgraded by stock analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a note issued to investors on Friday.

LFUS has been the subject of several other reports. Robert W. Baird raised their price objective on shares of Littelfuse from $182.00 to $194.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, May 1st. Benchmark reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of Littelfuse in a report on Wednesday, May 28th. Baird R W downgraded shares of Littelfuse from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, April 15th. Finally, Oppenheimer cut their price objective on shares of Littelfuse from $310.00 to $275.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, May 1st. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Littelfuse currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $252.25.

Littelfuse Stock Up 1.6%

Littelfuse stock opened at $217.69 on Friday. Littelfuse has a twelve month low of $142.10 and a twelve month high of $275.58. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $187.32 and a 200-day moving average price of $217.38. The company has a market capitalization of $5.38 billion, a P/E ratio of 48.38, a P/E/G ratio of 2.24 and a beta of 1.38. The company has a quick ratio of 2.62, a current ratio of 3.61 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32.

Littelfuse (NASDAQ:LFUS) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, April 29th. The technology company reported $2.19 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.82 by $0.37. Littelfuse had a net margin of 5.16% and a return on equity of 8.55%. The firm had revenue of $554.31 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $537.60 million. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $1.76 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 3.5% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts predict that Littelfuse will post 9.49 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Littelfuse

In other Littelfuse news, SVP Deepak Nayar sold 1,477 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, May 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $197.50, for a total value of $291,707.50. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 5,975 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,180,062.50. This trade represents a 19.82% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Insiders own 2.50% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in Littelfuse by 1.5% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 2,807,162 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $661,508,000 after acquiring an additional 40,423 shares in the last quarter. Neuberger Berman Group LLC raised its position in Littelfuse by 1.2% during the fourth quarter. Neuberger Berman Group LLC now owns 1,047,025 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $246,732,000 after purchasing an additional 11,958 shares in the last quarter. T. Rowe Price Investment Management Inc. raised its position in Littelfuse by 7.9% during the fourth quarter. T. Rowe Price Investment Management Inc. now owns 763,396 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $179,895,000 after purchasing an additional 55,835 shares in the last quarter. Van Lanschot Kempen Investment Management N.V. raised its position in Littelfuse by 39.9% during the first quarter. Van Lanschot Kempen Investment Management N.V. now owns 618,215 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $121,628,000 after purchasing an additional 176,243 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Littelfuse during the fourth quarter valued at about $131,579,000. 96.14% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Littelfuse Company Profile

Littelfuse, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells electronic components, modules, and subassemblies in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The company operates through Electronic, Transportation, and Industrial segments. The Electronics segment offers fuses and fuse accessories, positive temperature coefficient resettable fuses, electromechanical switches and interconnect solutions, polymer electrostatic discharge suppressors, varistors, reed switch based magnetic sensing products, and gas discharge tubes; and discrete transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diodes, TVS diode arrays, protection and switching thyristors, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and diodes, and insulated gate bipolar transistors.