Itau Unibanco (NYSE:ITUB) Hits New 12-Month High – Time to Buy?

Itau Unibanco Holding S.A. (NYSE:ITUB) hit a new 52-week high during mid-day trading on Monday. The stock traded as high as $10.17 and last traded at $10.0350, with a volume of 21495866 shares trading hands. The stock had previously closed at $8.59.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Weiss Ratings downgraded shares of Itau Unibanco from a “buy (b)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 6th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on shares of Itau Unibanco from $9.00 to $10.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 7th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and one has given a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $10.00.

Itau Unibanco Stock Up 2.5%

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.44, a current ratio of 1.08 and a quick ratio of 1.08. The stock has a market cap of $112.59 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.30, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.24 and a beta of 0.50. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $8.07 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $8.19.

Itau Unibanco (NYSE:ITUB) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, August 4th. The bank reported $0.21 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.22 by ($0.01). The company had revenue of $9.27 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.29 billion. Itau Unibanco had a return on equity of 21.40% and a net margin of 26.41%. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Itau Unibanco Holding S.A. will post 0.87 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Itau Unibanco

In other news, insider Vanzo Orestes sold 74,643 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $8.38, for a total value of $625,508.34. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider owned 933,371 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,821,648.98. The trade was a 7.40% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. 0.61% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Itau Unibanco

Hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. QRG Capital Management Inc. grew its stake in Itau Unibanco by 10.6% in the second quarter. QRG Capital Management Inc. now owns 144,370 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $1,180,000 after acquiring an additional 13,784 shares during the period. IPG Investment Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Itau Unibanco during the second quarter worth about $159,000. Engineers Gate Manager LP lifted its holdings in shares of Itau Unibanco by 19.5% during the 2nd quarter. Engineers Gate Manager LP now owns 878,443 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $7,177,000 after purchasing an additional 143,650 shares in the last quarter. Squarepoint Ops LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Itau Unibanco by 300.6% during the 2nd quarter. Squarepoint Ops LLC now owns 312,133 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $2,550,000 after purchasing an additional 234,214 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Carmignac Gestion grew its position in shares of Itau Unibanco by 41.6% in the 2nd quarter. Carmignac Gestion now owns 12,219,314 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $99,832,000 after purchasing an additional 3,589,092 shares during the period.

Itau Unibanco Company Profile

Itaú Unibanco Holding SA is a Brazil-based financial services company and one of the largest private-sector banking groups in Latin America. Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ITUB, while its principal operations are based in Brazil.

The company provides a broad range of banking and financial products for individuals, businesses and institutional clients. Its services include checking and savings accounts, consumer and commercial lending, credit and debit cards, payments, insurance, investment products, wealth management, foreign exchange and investment banking.

Itaú Unibanco was created in 2008 through the merger of Banco Itaú and Unibanco.