MarketAxess Holdings, Inc. (MKTX) Lifted to Hold at Zacks Investment Research

Zacks Investment Research upgraded shares of MarketAxess Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a report published on Wednesday morning.

According to Zacks, “Shares of MarketAxess have outperformed the industry year to date. The company's underwriting results have been consistently impressive driven by growth in revenues, improving trading volumes, ongoing investments in areas including Open Trading, launch of products and its strong market position in U.S. credit. During second-quarter 2017, the company's earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate and grew year over year on higher trading volumes. We are nevertheless, concerned with the company’s escalating expenses. This might hurt the company’s margins. The stock has witnessed a downward revision in Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2017 in the past 30 days.”

Other equities analysts also recently issued research reports about the stock. BidaskClub upgraded shares of MarketAxess Holdings from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research note on Monday, July 31st. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods restated a buy rating and issued a $210.00 price objective on shares of MarketAxess Holdings in a research report on Friday, July 14th. Finally, Raymond James Financial, Inc. raised their price objective on shares of MarketAxess Holdings from $216.00 to $219.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Thursday, July 27th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, three have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. The stock has a consensus rating of Buy and an average target price of $197.17.

Shares of MarketAxess Holdings (NASDAQ MKTX) traded down 0.01% on Wednesday, reaching $190.60. 140,375 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged. MarketAxess Holdings has a 12 month low of $145.10 and a 12 month high of $211.06. The firm’s 50-day moving average price is $196.45 and its 200 day moving average price is $192.74. The company has a market cap of $7.15 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 50.13 and a beta of 0.69.

MarketAxess Holdings (NASDAQ:MKTX) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, July 26th. The financial services provider reported $1.00 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.92 by $0.08. The firm had revenue of $97.31 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $96.42 million. MarketAxess Holdings had a net margin of 37.46% and a return on equity of 30.38%. The company’s revenue was up .7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $0.88 earnings per share. Equities research analysts predict that MarketAxess Holdings will post $4.12 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, August 24th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, August 10th were given a $0.33 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, August 8th. This represents a $1.32 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.69%. MarketAxess Holdings’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 34.65%.

In other MarketAxess Holdings news, CEO Richard M. Mcvey sold 20,000 shares of MarketAxess Holdings stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $198.63, for a total transaction of $3,972,600.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,108,142 shares in the company, valued at $220,110,245.46. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider Nicholas Themelis sold 5,596 shares of MarketAxess Holdings stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, June 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $200.84, for a total transaction of $1,123,900.64. Following the sale, the insider now owns 67,763 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $13,609,520.92. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 34,882 shares of company stock valued at $6,966,237 over the last 90 days. 4.51% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Cutler Group LP bought a new stake in shares of MarketAxess Holdings during the second quarter valued at about $110,000. GQG Partners LLC bought a new stake in shares of MarketAxess Holdings during the second quarter valued at about $127,000. First Personal Financial Services raised its stake in shares of MarketAxess Holdings by 2.6% in the second quarter. First Personal Financial Services now owns 631 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $127,000 after buying an additional 16 shares during the last quarter. Traynor Capital Management Inc. bought a new stake in shares of MarketAxess Holdings during the second quarter valued at about $203,000. Finally, Puzo Michael J bought a new stake in shares of MarketAxess Holdings during the first quarter valued at about $212,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.36% of the company’s stock.

MarketAxess Holdings Company Profile

MarketAxess Holdings Inc operates an electronic trading platform that enables fixed-income market participants to trade corporate bonds and other types of fixed-income instruments using its trading technology. Institutional investor and broker-dealer firms are users of trading platform, accessing global liquidity in the United States corporate bonds, emerging markets and high-yield bonds, European bonds, the United States agency bonds, municipal bonds, credit default swaps and other fixed-income securities.

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