John Wiley & Sons (NYSE:WLY) Hits New 12-Month High After Dividend Announcement

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE:WLY) shares hit a new 52-week high during trading on Friday after the company announced a dividend. The company traded as high as $48.31 and last traded at $47.9540, with a volume of 2722942 shares. The stock had previously closed at $45.56.

The newly announced dividend which will be paid on Thursday, July 23rd. Investors of record on Tuesday, July 7th will be given a dividend of $0.3575 per share. This is a boost from John Wiley & Sons’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.35. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, July 7th. This represents a $1.43 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.0%. John Wiley & Sons’s dividend payout ratio is currently 33.57%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms recently weighed in on WLY. Zacks Research cut John Wiley & Sons from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, May 15th. Weiss Ratings raised John Wiley & Sons from a “hold (c)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research note on Friday, May 29th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Hold rating, Based on data from MarketBeat, John Wiley & Sons has a consensus rating of “Hold”.

John Wiley & Sons Trading Up 5.3%

The company has a current ratio of 0.54, a quick ratio of 0.51 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.79. The stock has a market cap of $2.46 billion, a P/E ratio of 11.34 and a beta of 0.80. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $42.47 and its 200 day simple moving average is $36.20.

John Wiley & Sons (NYSE:WLY) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, June 16th. The company reported $1.67 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.65 by $0.02. John Wiley & Sons had a net margin of 13.22% and a return on equity of 29.01%. The company had revenue of $447.94 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $450.00 million. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.37 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 1.2% on a year-over-year basis. John Wiley & Sons has set its FY 2027 guidance at 4.600-5.050 EPS. As a group, analysts expect that John Wiley & Sons, Inc. will post 4.8 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of WLY. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its stake in shares of John Wiley & Sons by 13.8% in the 3rd quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 650,021 shares of the company’s stock valued at $26,306,000 after buying an additional 78,595 shares during the period. WINTON GROUP Ltd boosted its holdings in John Wiley & Sons by 891.4% in the third quarter. WINTON GROUP Ltd now owns 79,871 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,232,000 after acquiring an additional 71,815 shares during the last quarter. Clarkston Capital Partners LLC increased its position in John Wiley & Sons by 16.7% in the third quarter. Clarkston Capital Partners LLC now owns 2,207,824 shares of the company’s stock worth $89,351,000 after purchasing an additional 315,329 shares during the period. Neumeier Poma Investment Counsel LLC acquired a new stake in John Wiley & Sons in the third quarter worth about $16,012,000. Finally, Brickwood Asset Management LLP bought a new stake in John Wiley & Sons during the 4th quarter worth about $724,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 73.94% of the company’s stock.

John Wiley & Sons Company Profile

John Wiley & Sons, Inc is a global publishing and educational services company founded in 1807 and headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey. The company operates through two primary segments: Research & Publishing and Education. Through these segments, Wiley produces a wide range of scholarly journals, books, reference works and digital products for academic, scientific, technical and medical markets, as well as professional development and higher education learning resources.

In its Research & Publishing segment, Wiley publishes thousands of peer-reviewed journals and maintains the Wiley Online Library, a leading platform for scientific and scholarly content.