Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) Upgraded by StockNews.com to Hold

StockNews.com upgraded shares of Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research note released on Tuesday.

Several other research firms also recently weighed in on VECO. Oppenheimer raised their price objective on Veeco Instruments from $45.00 to $55.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Thursday, June 27th. Benchmark restated a buy rating and issued a $42.00 price target on shares of Veeco Instruments in a research report on Wednesday, August 7th. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their price objective on shares of Veeco Instruments from $39.00 to $35.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, August 8th. Needham & Company LLC restated a buy rating and set a $55.00 target price on shares of Veeco Instruments in a report on Wednesday, August 7th. Finally, Northland Securities reduced their price target on shares of Veeco Instruments from $53.00 to $47.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, August 7th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $45.57.

Veeco Instruments Stock Performance

Shares of VECO stock opened at $31.48 on Tuesday. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $33.59 and a 200-day simple moving average of $38.17. The company has a market cap of $1.78 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -69.96 and a beta of 1.16. The company has a current ratio of 3.52, a quick ratio of 2.32 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.35. Veeco Instruments has a 12-month low of $23.63 and a 12-month high of $49.25.

Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, August 6th. The semiconductor company reported $0.42 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.43 by ($0.01). The company had revenue of $175.88 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $176.03 million. Veeco Instruments had a return on equity of 12.03% and a net margin of 11.83%. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 8.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company earned $0.21 earnings per share. On average, equities analysts forecast that Veeco Instruments will post 1.2 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Veeco Instruments news, CFO John P. Kiernan sold 2,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $29.04, for a total value of $72,600.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 85,142 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,472,523.68. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. 2.40% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Veeco Instruments

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Creative Planning boosted its stake in Veeco Instruments by 47.4% in the 3rd quarter. Creative Planning now owns 28,001 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $928,000 after buying an additional 9,008 shares during the last quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Veeco Instruments by 116.2% during the 3rd quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 3,626 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $120,000 after acquiring an additional 1,949 shares during the period. Algert Global LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Veeco Instruments by 21.7% during the 2nd quarter. Algert Global LLC now owns 31,886 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $1,489,000 after acquiring an additional 5,676 shares during the period. Driehaus Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in Veeco Instruments by 119.3% in the second quarter. Driehaus Capital Management LLC now owns 1,458,288 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $68,117,000 after purchasing an additional 793,429 shares during the period. Finally, Cubist Systematic Strategies LLC increased its position in Veeco Instruments by 1.7% during the second quarter. Cubist Systematic Strategies LLC now owns 118,733 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $5,546,000 after purchasing an additional 1,984 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 98.46% of the company’s stock.

Veeco Instruments Company Profile

Veeco Instruments Inc, together with its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures, sells, and supports semiconductor and thin film process equipment primarily to make electronic devices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, China, Rest of the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company offers laser annealing, ion beam deposition and etch, metal organic chemical vapor deposition, single wafer wet processing and surface preparation, molecular beam epitaxy, advanced packaging lithography, atomic layer deposition, and other deposition systems.