Stock Traders Purchase High Volume of Call Options on ASE Technology (NYSE:ASX)

ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE:ASX) saw unusually large options trading on Wednesday. Stock traders acquired 29,024 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 1,134% compared to the average volume of 2,352 call options.

Institutional Trading of ASE Technology

A number of large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Lazard Asset Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of ASE Technology by 11.1% in the 4th quarter. Lazard Asset Management LLC now owns 20,010,829 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $322,174,000 after purchasing an additional 1,997,888 shares during the period. Morgan Stanley increased its holdings in ASE Technology by 14.3% in the fourth quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 10,607,588 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $170,782,000 after purchasing an additional 1,330,580 shares in the last quarter. Bank of America Corp DE lifted its stake in ASE Technology by 9.6% in the third quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 9,661,484 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $107,146,000 after buying an additional 846,300 shares during the period. UBS Group AG lifted its stake in ASE Technology by 11.4% in the fourth quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 9,038,322 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $145,517,000 after buying an additional 922,692 shares during the period. Finally, Rafferty Asset Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of ASE Technology by 50.9% during the 2nd quarter. Rafferty Asset Management LLC now owns 7,392,190 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $76,361,000 after buying an additional 2,491,918 shares in the last quarter. 6.80% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes

ASX has been the subject of a number of research reports. Wall Street Zen lowered shares of ASE Technology from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Saturday, March 7th. Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c)” rating on shares of ASE Technology in a research report on Wednesday, January 21st. Finally, Zacks Research downgraded shares of ASE Technology from a “hold” rating to a “strong sell” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, ASE Technology currently has an average rating of “Hold”.

ASE Technology Trading Up 2.5%

Shares of ASE Technology stock traded up $0.53 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $21.52. The company had a trading volume of 3,209,725 shares, compared to its average volume of 8,335,662. The firm has a market cap of $47.74 billion, a PE ratio of 37.09, a P/E/G ratio of 0.91 and a beta of 1.42. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $20.89 and a 200 day moving average price of $15.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.57, a current ratio of 1.28 and a quick ratio of 1.00. ASE Technology has a fifty-two week low of $6.94 and a fifty-two week high of $25.28.

ASE Technology (NYSE:ASX) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 5th. The semiconductor company reported $0.11 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.20 by ($0.09). ASE Technology had a return on equity of 12.00% and a net margin of 6.31%.The firm had revenue of $5.67 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.47 billion. On average, equities analysts anticipate that ASE Technology will post 0.76 earnings per share for the current year.

ASE Technology Company Profile

ASE Technology Holding Co, Ltd. (NYSE: ASX), commonly referred to as ASE, is a Taiwan-based provider of semiconductor assembly and testing services. The company focuses on back-end semiconductor manufacturing and related services that prepare integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices for final use. Its core activities include advanced IC packaging, final testing, wafer probing, and related engineering and supply-chain support for semiconductor customers.

ASE offers a range of products and technical capabilities designed to meet increasingly complex packaging and system-in-package requirements.