Stock Traders Buy Large Volume of Barrick Gold Call Options (NYSE:GOLD)

Barrick Gold Corp (NYSE:GOLD) (TSE:ABX) saw unusually large options trading on Tuesday. Stock traders purchased 81,124 call options on the stock. This is an increase of 44% compared to the average volume of 56,155 call options.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its holdings in Barrick Gold by 58.4% during the fourth quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 100,680,644 shares of the gold and copper producer’s stock worth $1,821,963,000 after acquiring an additional 37,128,653 shares during the period. Van ECK Associates Corp lifted its holdings in Barrick Gold by 9.7% during the fourth quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 80,933,517 shares of the gold and copper producer’s stock worth $1,464,070,000 after acquiring an additional 7,150,142 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in Barrick Gold by 1.8% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 63,671,495 shares of the gold and copper producer’s stock worth $1,151,817,000 after acquiring an additional 1,103,710 shares during the period. Capital World Investors lifted its holdings in Barrick Gold by 16.4% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 45,479,229 shares of the gold and copper producer’s stock worth $821,790,000 after acquiring an additional 6,417,244 shares during the period. Finally, First Eagle Investment Management LLC lifted its holdings in Barrick Gold by 6.4% during the fourth quarter. First Eagle Investment Management LLC now owns 44,681,411 shares of the gold and copper producer’s stock worth $808,287,000 after acquiring an additional 2,680,178 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 62.85% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

GOLD has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. StockNews.com upgraded Barrick Gold from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, February 21st. Raymond James dropped their price objective on Barrick Gold from $24.00 to $23.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 15th. Sanford C. Bernstein downgraded Barrick Gold from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Monday, January 8th. Argus reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of Barrick Gold in a research report on Monday, February 26th. Finally, National Bank Financial reiterated a “sector perform overweight” rating on shares of Barrick Gold in a research report on Monday, April 8th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $20.06.

Barrick Gold Trading Down 4.0 %

NYSE GOLD opened at $16.64 on Wednesday. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $16.23 and a 200 day simple moving average of $16.34. Barrick Gold has a one year low of $13.76 and a one year high of $20.75. The stock has a market capitalization of $29.21 billion, a P/E ratio of 23.10, a P/E/G ratio of 1.50 and a beta of 0.58. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.15, a current ratio of 3.16 and a quick ratio of 2.40.

Barrick Gold (NYSE:GOLD) (TSE:ABX) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 14th. The gold and copper producer reported $0.27 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.21 by $0.06. Barrick Gold had a return on equity of 4.64% and a net margin of 11.16%. The firm had revenue of $3.06 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.13 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.13 earnings per share. Research analysts expect that Barrick Gold will post 0.95 earnings per share for the current year.

Barrick Gold Cuts Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, March 15th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, February 29th were issued a $0.074 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Wednesday, February 28th. This represents a $0.30 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.78%. Barrick Gold’s dividend payout ratio is presently 55.56%.

About Barrick Gold

Barrick Gold Corporation is a sector-leading gold and copper producer.  Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GOLD and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ABX.
 
In January 2019 Barrick merged with Randgold Resources and in July that year it combined its gold mines in Nevada, USA, with those of Newmont Corporation in a joint venture, Nevada Gold Mines, which is majority-owned and operated by Barrick.