Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRTH) Short Interest Down 28.4% in January

Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRTH) was the recipient of a large decline in short interest in January. As of January 31st, there was short interest totalling 411,300 shares, a decline of 28.4% from the January 15th total of 574,200 shares. Currently, 1.7% of the company’s stock are sold short. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 512,900 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 0.8 days.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CEO Thomas Charles Priore sold 294,167 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, January 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $7.44, for a total value of $2,188,602.48. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 34,025,319 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $253,148,373.36. This represents a 0.86 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, insider Sean Kiewiet sold 170,596 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, December 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $10.60, for a total transaction of $1,808,317.60. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 711,853 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,545,641.80. This represents a 19.33 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 5,343,646 shares of company stock worth $40,419,456 in the last quarter. 76.30% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Priority Technology

A number of large investors have recently bought and sold shares of PRTH. Barclays PLC raised its position in Priority Technology by 255.9% during the third quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 26,064 shares of the company’s stock valued at $178,000 after purchasing an additional 18,741 shares in the last quarter. Rebalance LLC bought a new stake in shares of Priority Technology in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $4,822,000. Jane Street Group LLC raised its holdings in Priority Technology by 6.1% in the 3rd quarter. Jane Street Group LLC now owns 22,347 shares of the company’s stock worth $153,000 after acquiring an additional 1,293 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC raised its stake in Priority Technology by 5.8% during the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 396,335 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,707,000 after buying an additional 21,598 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. increased its stake in shares of Priority Technology by 15.8% in the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 56,557 shares of the company’s stock worth $386,000 after purchasing an additional 7,719 shares in the last quarter. 11.52% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Priority Technology Price Performance

Shares of Priority Technology stock traded up $0.30 on Friday, hitting $11.43. 350,440 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 820,314. The company has a market capitalization of $882.37 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -27.21 and a beta of 1.17. Priority Technology has a one year low of $2.82 and a one year high of $12.44. The company has a fifty day moving average of $10.11 and a two-hundred day moving average of $7.76.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities analysts have weighed in on the stock. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised shares of Priority Technology from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $10.00 to $14.00 in a research note on Thursday, January 16th. Lake Street Capital boosted their price objective on shares of Priority Technology from $8.00 to $13.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, B. Riley raised their target price on shares of Priority Technology from $13.00 to $16.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, November 25th.

Priority Technology Company Profile

Priority Technology Holdings, Inc operates as a payment technology company in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB) Payments, Business-To-Business (B2B) Payments, and Enterprise Payments. It offers SMB payments processing solutions for B2C transactions through independent sales organizations, financial institutions, independent software vendors, and other referral partners through its MX product suite, which includes MX Connect and MX Merchant products, such as MX Insights, MX Storefront, MX Retail, MX Invoice, MX B2B and ACH.com, and others, which provides flexible and customizable set of business applications that helps to manage critical business work functions and revenue performance to resellers and merchant clients using core payment processing.