Hawkins, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWKN) Short Interest Update

Hawkins, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWKN) was the recipient of a significant growth in short interest during the month of November. As of November 15th, there was short interest totalling 665,400 shares, a growth of 63.5% from the October 31st total of 407,000 shares. Based on an average trading volume of 119,500 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 5.6 days. Approximately 3.5% of the shares of the stock are sold short.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Hawkins

A number of institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of HWKN. Westwood Holdings Group Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Hawkins in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $31,504,000. Janus Henderson Group PLC raised its stake in shares of Hawkins by 21.6% in the 1st quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 43,243 shares of the specialty chemicals company’s stock valued at $3,320,000 after acquiring an additional 7,683 shares during the period. EFG Asset Management North America Corp. purchased a new stake in shares of Hawkins in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $1,507,000. Aptus Capital Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Hawkins in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $4,741,000. Finally, Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio raised its stake in shares of Hawkins by 7,343.9% in the 1st quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio now owns 22,555 shares of the specialty chemicals company’s stock valued at $1,732,000 after acquiring an additional 22,252 shares during the period. 69.71% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, BWS Financial restated a “neutral” rating and set a $122.00 price target on shares of Hawkins in a research report on Thursday, October 31st.

Hawkins Price Performance

HWKN traded up $1.12 on Friday, reaching $134.51. 55,438 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 122,424. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.21, a current ratio of 2.27 and a quick ratio of 1.39. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $124.60 and its 200-day moving average price is $110.56. Hawkins has a twelve month low of $54.44 and a twelve month high of $138.86. The stock has a market cap of $2.81 billion, a PE ratio of 34.40, a P/E/G ratio of 4.67 and a beta of 0.77.

Hawkins (NASDAQ:HWKN) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, October 30th. The specialty chemicals company reported $1.16 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.18 by ($0.02). Hawkins had a return on equity of 19.64% and a net margin of 8.74%. The firm had revenue of $247.03 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $259.59 million. Sell-side analysts expect that Hawkins will post 4.12 EPS for the current year.

Hawkins Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 29th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 15th were paid a dividend of $0.18 per share. This represents a $0.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.54%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, November 15th. Hawkins’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 18.41%.

About Hawkins

Hawkins, Inc operates as a specialty chemical and ingredients company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Industrial, Water Treatment, and Health and Nutrition. The Industrial segment offers industrial chemicals, products, and services to agriculture, chemical processing, electronics, energy, food, pharmaceutical, and plating industries.