Celanese (NYSE:CE) Price Target Lowered to $46.00 at BMO Capital Markets

Celanese (NYSE:CE) had its price target trimmed by BMO Capital Markets from $73.00 to $46.00 in a report published on Thursday,Benzinga reports. The firm currently has an underperform rating on the basic materials company’s stock.

Several other brokerages have also recently issued reports on CE. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price objective on Celanese from $75.00 to $55.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday. Royal Bank of Canada cut Celanese from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and reduced their price objective for the company from $84.00 to $56.00 in a research note on Thursday. Morgan Stanley dropped their target price on Celanese from $100.00 to $80.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, January 13th. Bank of America raised Celanese from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and dropped their target price for the company from $95.00 to $88.00 in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. Finally, Vertical Research lowered Celanese from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating and set a $130.00 target price on the stock. in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have issued a hold rating and three have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $83.53.

Celanese Stock Down 4.4 %

NYSE:CE opened at $52.51 on Thursday. The stock has a market capitalization of $5.74 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.77, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.39 and a beta of 1.17. The company has a quick ratio of 0.76, a current ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.47. Celanese has a 52 week low of $51.51 and a 52 week high of $172.16. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $68.57 and its two-hundred day moving average is $97.67.

Celanese (NYSE:CE) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, February 18th. The basic materials company reported $1.45 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.25 by $0.20. The business had revenue of $2.37 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.36 billion. Celanese had a positive return on equity of 12.01% and a negative net margin of 14.81%. Research analysts anticipate that Celanese will post 8.79 EPS for the current year.

Celanese Cuts Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, March 31st. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, February 25th will be issued a dividend of $0.03 per share. This represents a $0.12 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.23%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, February 25th. Celanese’s payout ratio is -20.10%.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Celanese

Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in CE. DT Investment Partners LLC grew its holdings in shares of Celanese by 128.8% during the third quarter. DT Investment Partners LLC now owns 183 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $25,000 after buying an additional 103 shares during the last quarter. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. grew its holdings in shares of Celanese by 5.2% during the third quarter. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. now owns 2,265 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $308,000 after buying an additional 111 shares during the last quarter. Ashton Thomas Private Wealth LLC grew its holdings in shares of Celanese by 0.7% during the third quarter. Ashton Thomas Private Wealth LLC now owns 21,730 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $2,954,000 after buying an additional 145 shares during the last quarter. Neumann Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Celanese by 5.3% during the third quarter. Neumann Capital Management LLC now owns 3,000 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $408,000 after buying an additional 150 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Focus Partners Wealth grew its holdings in shares of Celanese by 3.9% during the fourth quarter. Focus Partners Wealth now owns 4,197 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $291,000 after buying an additional 156 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 98.87% of the company’s stock.

About Celanese

Celanese Corporation, a chemical and specialty materials company, manufactures and sells high performance engineered polymers in the United States and internationally. It operates through Engineered Materials and Acetyl Chain. The Engineered Materials segment develops, produces, and supplies specialty polymers for automotive and medical applications, as well as for use in industrial products and consumer electronics.