Squarepoint Ops LLC Buys Shares of 741,680 StoneCo Ltd. $STNE

Squarepoint Ops LLC bought a new position in StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) in the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The fund bought 741,680 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,040,000.

Other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Bank of America Corp DE boosted its holdings in StoneCo by 151.7% in the first quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 6,032,572 shares of the company’s stock worth $85,180,000 after purchasing an additional 3,636,276 shares in the last quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. raised its holdings in StoneCo by 1,288.4% during the second quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. now owns 577,959 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,265,000 after buying an additional 536,331 shares in the last quarter. Hsbc Holdings PLC lifted its position in shares of StoneCo by 286.6% in the first quarter. Hsbc Holdings PLC now owns 163,065 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,298,000 after buying an additional 120,883 shares during the last quarter. Squadra Investments Gestao DE Recursos LTDA. lifted its position in shares of StoneCo by 435.5% in the first quarter. Squadra Investments Gestao DE Recursos LTDA. now owns 6,662,253 shares of the company’s stock worth $94,071,000 after buying an additional 5,418,053 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Lombard Odier Asset Management Europe Ltd bought a new stake in shares of StoneCo during the 1st quarter worth about $1,836,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 73.19% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have recently commented on STNE. BTIG Research lowered their price objective on StoneCo from $22.00 to $15.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, May 15th. Weiss Ratings lowered StoneCo from a “hold (c)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a report on Thursday, June 18th. Bank of America cut StoneCo from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $13.00 target price for the company. in a research report on Wednesday, July 15th. Jefferies Financial Group began coverage on StoneCo in a research report on Thursday, July 23rd. They issued a “hold” rating and a $12.60 price target on the stock. Finally, UBS Group cut their price target on StoneCo from $15.00 to $13.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Friday, August 28th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and six have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $14.30.

StoneCo Stock Performance

NASDAQ STNE opened at $10.30 on Friday. The company’s fifty day moving average is $10.47 and its two-hundred day moving average is $11.88. StoneCo Ltd. has a 52-week low of $9.08 and a 52-week high of $19.95. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.84, a current ratio of 1.26 and a quick ratio of 1.26. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.56 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 4.16, a P/E/G ratio of 0.26 and a beta of 1.75.

StoneCo (NASDAQ:STNE) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, August 13th. The company reported $0.47 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.46 by $0.01. StoneCo had a net margin of 22.92% and a return on equity of 22.19%. The business had revenue of $129.73 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $708.24 million. Equities research analysts forecast that StoneCo Ltd. will post 2.3 EPS for the current year.

Insider Transactions at StoneCo

In other StoneCo news, Director Silvio Morais sold 21,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $9.91, for a total value of $208,110.00. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. 11.25% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

StoneCo Profile

StoneCo Ltd., commonly known as Stone, is a Brazilian financial technology company that provides integrated digital payment solutions and related financial services to merchants. Through its cloud-based platform, Stone enables businesses of all sizes to accept a variety of payment methods, including point-of-sale (POS) terminals, mobile card readers and e-commerce gateways. In addition to payment acceptance, the company offers value-added services such as working capital loans, digital banking products and automated billing tools designed to help merchants manage cash flow and streamline operations.

Since its founding in 2012 by André Street and Eduardo Pontes, Stone has focused on serving over half a million merchants across Brazil’s retail, restaurant and services sectors.