Fortis Inc. (TSE:FTS) Receives C$79.32 Consensus Price Target from Brokerages

Shares of Fortis Inc. (TSE:FTS) have been assigned a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” from the ten analysts that are covering the company, Marketbeat Ratings reports. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation and five have assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average 1 year price target among brokers that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is C$79.68.

A number of research firms recently commented on FTS. Raymond James Financial boosted their target price on Fortis from C$78.50 to C$80.50 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, April 28th. National Bank Financial lifted their price objective on Fortis from C$75.00 to C$82.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Monday, June 1st. Barclays reduced their price objective on Fortis from C$84.00 to C$83.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, May 8th. Desjardins increased their target price on Fortis from C$81.00 to C$85.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday. Finally, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce downgraded Fortis from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday.

Fortis Stock Performance

Shares of TSE FTS opened at C$82.00 on Friday. The company has a market cap of C$41.75 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.19, a P/E/G ratio of 3.01 and a beta of 0.41. Fortis has a 52-week low of C$65.27 and a 52-week high of C$82.87. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 145.23, a quick ratio of 0.36 and a current ratio of 0.49. The firm’s fifty day moving average is C$79.25 and its two-hundred day moving average is C$77.13.

Fortis (TSE:FTS) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 6th. The company reported C$0.99 EPS for the quarter. The business had revenue of C$3.40 billion during the quarter. Fortis had a net margin of 14.75% and a return on equity of 7.51%. As a group, analysts anticipate that Fortis will post 3.3419913 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Fortis Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, June 1st. Investors of record on Monday, June 1st were paid a dividend of $0.64 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, May 15th. This represents a $2.56 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.1%. Fortis’s dividend payout ratio is presently 74.04%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Fortis news, insider James Reid sold 24,700 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, June 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of C$79.21, for a total transaction of C$1,956,487.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider owned 31,283 shares in the company, valued at C$2,477,926.43. This trade represents a 44.12% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Insiders have acquired a total of 572 shares of company stock worth $45,909 in the last three months. 0.04% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Fortis Company Profile

Fortis owns and operates 10 utility transmission and distribution assets in Canada and the United States, serving more than 3.4 million electricity and gas customers. The company has smaller stakes in electricity generation and several Caribbean utilities. ITC operates electric transmission in seven U.S. states, with more than 16,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines in operation serving a peak load in excess of 23 gigawatts.