IDEX Co. (NYSE:IEX) Short Interest Update

IDEX Co. (NYSE:IEX) saw a significant drop in short interest during the month of March. As of March 31st, there was short interest totalling 748,600 shares, a drop of 7.1% from the March 15th total of 805,500 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 377,800 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 2.0 days. Approximately 1.0% of the shares of the company are short sold.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms have issued reports on IEX. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $255.00 target price on shares of IDEX in a research note on Thursday, March 21st. StockNews.com raised IDEX from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday. Stifel Nicolaus raised IDEX from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $215.00 to $265.00 in a report on Thursday, February 8th. Finally, Citigroup lifted their target price on IDEX from $254.00 to $277.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, April 8th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $238.00.

IDEX Trading Down 1.1 %

NYSE:IEX opened at $226.83 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.37, a current ratio of 2.89 and a quick ratio of 2.05. IDEX has a fifty-two week low of $183.76 and a fifty-two week high of $246.36. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $236.43 and its two-hundred day moving average is $215.81. The stock has a market cap of $17.17 billion, a PE ratio of 28.93, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.30 and a beta of 0.97.

IDEX (NYSE:IEX) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, February 6th. The industrial products company reported $1.83 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.05. IDEX had a return on equity of 18.56% and a net margin of 18.21%. The company had revenue of $788.90 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $767.96 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $2.01 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was down 2.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that IDEX will post 8.35 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On IDEX

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of IDEX by 0.6% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 8,802,857 shares of the industrial products company’s stock valued at $1,687,772,000 after buying an additional 53,138 shares during the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its holdings in IDEX by 12.7% in the 4th quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 7,409,706 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $1,608,722,000 after purchasing an additional 833,772 shares during the last quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its holdings in IDEX by 3.9% in the 1st quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 3,106,765 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $595,660,000 after purchasing an additional 117,605 shares during the last quarter. Impax Asset Management Group plc lifted its holdings in IDEX by 4.0% in the 4th quarter. Impax Asset Management Group plc now owns 2,190,741 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $475,632,000 after purchasing an additional 84,502 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Morgan Stanley lifted its holdings in IDEX by 274.1% in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 2,151,334 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $491,214,000 after purchasing an additional 1,576,263 shares during the last quarter. 97.96% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

IDEX Company Profile

IDEX Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides applied solutions worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Fluid & Metering Technologies (FMT), Health & Science Technologies (HST), and Fire & Safety/Diversified Products (FSDP). The FMT segment designs, produces, and distributes positive displacement pumps, valves, small volume provers, flow meters, injectors, and other fluid-handling pump modules and systems, as well as flow monitoring and other services for the food, chemical, general industrial, water and wastewater, agricultural, and energy industries.