AJ Bell (LON:AJB) Trading 14.6% Higher – Should You Buy?

AJ Bell plc (LON:AJB) rose 14.6% during mid-day trading on Friday . The company traded as high as GBX 619 and last traded at GBX 612. Approximately 86,071,602 shares were traded during trading, an increase of 946% from the average daily volume of 8,226,691 shares. The stock had previously closed at GBX 534.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on AJB. Shore Capital Group restated a “hold” rating on shares of AJ Bell in a research note on Friday, April 24th. Royal Bank Of Canada increased their price objective on AJ Bell from GBX 500 to GBX 510 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a report on Friday, May 15th. Jefferies Financial Group reissued a “buy” rating and issued a GBX 625 target price on shares of AJ Bell in a research report on Friday, May 15th. Citigroup upgraded AJ Bell to a “neutral” rating and boosted their target price for the company from GBX 500 to GBX 520 in a research note on Friday, May 8th. Finally, Berenberg Bank reiterated a “hold” rating and set a GBX 490 price target on shares of AJ Bell in a research note on Friday, April 24th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of GBX 554.38.

AJ Bell Trading Up 2.4%

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 5.55, a quick ratio of 7.16 and a current ratio of 3.67. The stock has a market cap of £2.48 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.52, a P/E/G ratio of 5.73 and a beta of 0.82. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of GBX 503.43 and a 200-day moving average price of GBX 480.75.

AJ Bell (LON:AJB) last released its earnings results on Thursday, May 21st. The company reported GBX 14.70 EPS for the quarter. The business had revenue of £182.96 million for the quarter. AJ Bell had a return on equity of 50.49% and a net margin of 33.07%. On average, equities research analysts expect that AJ Bell plc will post 23.8118812 EPS for the current year.

AJ Bell Company Profile

Established in 1995, AJ Bell is one of the largest investment platforms in the UK, operating at scale in both the advised and direct-to-consumer markets.

Our purpose is to help people invest by providing them with easy access to Pensions, ISAs and General investment accounts, great customer service and competitive charges.

Our two core platform propositions are AJ Bell in the D2C market and AJ Bell Investcentre in the advised market, which both provide access to a broad investment range including shares and other instruments traded on the major stock exchanges around the world, as well as all mainstream collective investments available in the UK and our own range of AJ Bell funds.