Stock Buyback Plan Approved by Tidewater (NYSE:TDW) Board

Tidewater (NYSE:TDW) announced that its board has initiated a stock repurchase plan on Monday, August 4th, RTT News reports. The company plans to repurchase $500.00 million in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the oil and gas company to purchase up to 21.3% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are often a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

TDW has been the subject of several analyst reports. BTIG Research lowered Tidewater from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Monday, July 14th. Raymond James Financial lowered their price objective on Tidewater from $76.00 to $70.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, May 7th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Tidewater currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $69.33.

Tidewater Price Performance

Shares of TDW stock opened at $48.84 on Tuesday. Tidewater has a 52-week low of $31.17 and a 52-week high of $91.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.50, a quick ratio of 2.00 and a current ratio of 2.07. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.42 billion, a P/E ratio of 14.62 and a beta of 1.08. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $47.37 and a 200 day moving average price of $44.95.

Tidewater (NYSE:TDW) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, August 4th. The oil and gas company reported $1.46 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.28 by $1.18. Tidewater had a return on equity of 15.97% and a net margin of 12.98%. The firm had revenue of $341.43 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $317.28 million. During the same period last year, the company earned $0.94 EPS. Tidewater’s quarterly revenue was up .6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Tidewater will post 3.25 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Tidewater news, EVP Daniel A. Hudson sold 5,000 shares of Tidewater stock in a transaction on Tuesday, July 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $50.02, for a total transaction of $250,100.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 85,986 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,301,019.72. The trade was a 5.50% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, Director Robert Robotti bought 15,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, June 4th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $42.05 per share, with a total value of $630,750.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 2,234,957 shares in the company, valued at $93,979,941.85. This represents a 0.68% increase in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have acquired 25,560 shares of company stock valued at $1,074,858. 8.33% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

About Tidewater

Tidewater Inc, together with its subsidiaries, provides offshore support vessels and marine support services to the offshore energy industry through the operation of a fleet of marine service vessels worldwide. It provides services in support of offshore oil and gas exploration, field development, and production, as well as windfarm development and maintenance, including towing of and anchor handling for mobile offshore drilling units; transporting supplies and personnel necessary to sustain drilling, workover, and production activities; offshore construction, and seismic and subsea support; geotechnical survey support for windfarm construction; and various specialized services, such as pipe and cable laying.