Boston Trust Walden Corp Purchases 11,549 Shares of The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC)

Boston Trust Walden Corp lifted its position in shares of The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) by 3.6% during the 4th quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 334,132 shares of the company’s stock after purchasing an additional 11,549 shares during the period. Boston Trust Walden Corp’s holdings in Toro were worth $26,764,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of TTC. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its position in shares of Toro by 0.8% in the fourth quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 15,298 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,225,000 after buying an additional 120 shares during the last quarter. Lindenwold Advisors INC raised its stake in Toro by 2.8% in the 3rd quarter. Lindenwold Advisors INC now owns 4,612 shares of the company’s stock worth $400,000 after purchasing an additional 125 shares in the last quarter. Northwest Financial Advisors boosted its holdings in Toro by 2.0% in the 4th quarter. Northwest Financial Advisors now owns 6,945 shares of the company’s stock valued at $556,000 after purchasing an additional 139 shares during the period. CWM LLC grew its position in shares of Toro by 15.5% during the 3rd quarter. CWM LLC now owns 1,063 shares of the company’s stock worth $92,000 after purchasing an additional 143 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Toro by 1.0% during the third quarter. Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC now owns 15,201 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,318,000 after purchasing an additional 146 shares during the period. 87.95% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Separately, Raymond James cut their target price on Toro from $100.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, December 20th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $93.75.

Toro Stock Down 3.2 %

TTC stock opened at $80.63 on Tuesday. The Toro Company has a fifty-two week low of $76.95 and a fifty-two week high of $100.93. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $83.63 and its 200 day simple moving average is $85.73. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a quick ratio of 0.74 and a current ratio of 1.81. The company has a market cap of $8.16 billion, a P/E ratio of 20.11 and a beta of 0.72.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 EPS for the quarter, hitting analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.95. The business had revenue of $1.08 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.09 billion. Toro had a return on equity of 27.25% and a net margin of 9.14%. Toro’s quarterly revenue was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.71 earnings per share. On average, research analysts expect that The Toro Company will post 4.41 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Toro Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, January 13th. Stockholders of record on Monday, December 23rd were given a dividend of $0.38 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, December 23rd. This is a boost from Toro’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.36. This represents a $1.52 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.89%. Toro’s dividend payout ratio is currently 37.91%.

Toro declared that its Board of Directors has authorized a share buyback plan on Tuesday, December 10th that permits the company to buyback 4,000,000 outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

About Toro

The Toro Company designs, manufactures, markets, and sells professional turf maintenance equipment and services. It operates through two segments: Professional and Residential. The Professional segment offers turf and landscape equipment products, including sports fields and grounds mowing and maintenance equipment, golf course mowing and maintenance equipment, landscape contractor mowing equipment, landscape creation and renovation equipment, and other maintenance equipment; rental, specialty, and underground construction equipment, such as horizontal directional drills, walk and ride trenchers, stand-on skid steers, vacuum excavators, stump grinders, turf renovation products, asset locators, pipe rehabilitation solutions, materials handling equipment, and other after-market tools; and snow and ice management equipment, such as snowplows, as well as stand-on snow and ice removal equipment, such as snowplow, snow brush, and snow thrower attachments, salt and sand spreaders, and related parts and accessories for light and medium duty trucks, utility task vehicles, skid steers, and front-end loaders.