CIT Group Inc. (CIT) shares are trading marginally higher in midday trading following a WSJ report saying Hudson Executive Capital LP, a new activist hedge fund started by two former JP Morgan (JPM) deal makers, has taken a stake in CIT. Hudson Executive believes the best strategy for the lender would be to sell off its various pieces given its recent under-performance.
Offering a dividend yield of 2.03%, shares of the New York-based firm are down 32% year-over-year, and 26.07% since the beginning of the year. The name currently trades around the mid-$29 level, just above the $27 price in Dec. 2009 when the more than 100-year-old lender started trading again after emerging from one of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history.
Fundamentally, the $5.9 billion market cap name shows the following financial data:
- $7.69 billion in cash in most recent quarter
- $47.88 billion t-12 total assets
- $9.06 billion total equity
- $2.63 billion t-12 revenue
- $1.08 billion annual net income
- ($1.82 billion) free cash flow
On valuation metrics, CIT Group Inc. shares have a T-12 price/sales ratio of 2.25 and a price/book for the same period of 0.55. EPS is $6.25. The name has a market cap of $6.01 billion and a median Wall Street price target of $50.00 with a high target of $65.00. Currently there are 11 analysts that rate CIT a ‘Buy’, 8 rate it a ‘Hold’. No analyst rates it a ‘Sell’.
In terms of share statistics, CIT Group Inc. has a total of 200.97 million shares outstanding, with 0.86% held by insiders and the rest held by institutions. The stock’s short interest currently stands at 4.80%, bringing the total number of shares sold short to 9.33 million.
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