Brown & Brown (NYSE:BRO) Announces Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Expectations By $0.07 EPS

Brown & Brown (NYSE:BRO) released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday. The financial services provider reported $1.14 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.07 by $0.07, Briefing.com reports. The firm had revenue of $1.26 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.22 billion. Brown & Brown had a net margin of 21.09% and a return on equity of 16.43%. Brown & Brown’s quarterly revenue was up 12.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $0.84 earnings per share.

Brown & Brown Trading Down 1.0 %

Brown & Brown stock opened at $82.13 on Thursday. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $84.30 and a 200-day simple moving average of $76.99. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.52, a current ratio of 1.97 and a quick ratio of 1.95. The stock has a market capitalization of $23.43 billion, a PE ratio of 25.27, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.49 and a beta of 0.78. Brown & Brown has a 12-month low of $60.00 and a 12-month high of $87.99.

Brown & Brown Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 15th. Stockholders of record on Monday, May 6th will be issued a $0.13 dividend. This represents a $0.52 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.63%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, May 3rd. Brown & Brown’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 16.00%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently weighed in on BRO. UBS Group increased their price objective on shares of Brown & Brown from $75.00 to $81.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Monday, January 29th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of Brown & Brown from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and dropped their price objective for the stock from $84.00 to $83.00 in a research note on Monday, January 8th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods increased their price objective on shares of Brown & Brown from $75.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 10th. Jefferies Financial Group cut shares of Brown & Brown from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and decreased their target price for the stock from $85.00 to $78.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 9th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on shares of Brown & Brown from $84.00 to $85.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $87.10.

Insider Activity

In other news, Chairman Hyatt J. Brown sold 144,323 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, March 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $85.96, for a total value of $12,406,005.08. Following the completion of the transaction, the chairman now directly owns 37,460,605 shares in the company, valued at $3,220,113,605.80. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Insiders own 17.02% of the company’s stock.

About Brown & Brown

Brown & Brown, Inc markets and sells insurance products and services in the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Retail, National Programs, Wholesale Brokerage, and Services. The Retail segment provides property and casualty, employee benefits insurance products, personal insurance products, specialties insurance products, risk management strategies, loss control survey and analysis, consultancy, and claims processing services.