Thinking Of Buying Western Alliance Bancorporation (NYSE: WAL) Stock? Here Is What You Should Know

Western Alliance Bancorporation (NYSE:WAL) shares, rose in value on Thursday, 05/25/23, with the stock price down by -2.53% to the previous day’s close as strong demand from buyers drove the stock to $35.43.

Actively observing the price movement in the last trading, the stock closed the session at $36.35, falling within a range of $34.4418 and $36.65. The value of beta (5-year monthly) was 1.36 whereas the PE ratio was 4.04 over 12-month period. Referring to stock’s 52-week performance, its high was $86.87, and the low was $7.46. On the whole, WAL has fluctuated by -6.10% over the past month.

With the market capitalization of Western Alliance Bancorporation currently standing at about $3.98 billion, investors are eagerly awaiting this quarter’s results, scheduled for Jul 19, 2023 – Jul 24, 2023. The company’s Forward Dividend Ratio is 1.44, with its dividend yield at 4.06%. As a result, investors might want to see an improvement in the stock’s price before the company announces its earnings report. Analysts are projecting the company’s earnings per share (EPS) to be $2.02, which is expected to increase to $2.26 for fiscal year $8.22 and then to about $8.49 by fiscal year 2024. Data indicates that the EPS growth is expected to be -15.30% in 2024, while the next year’s EPS growth is forecast to be 3.30%.

Analysts have estimated the company’s revenue for the quarter at $660.81 million, with a low estimate of $606 million and a high estimate of $685.1 million. According to the average forecast, sales growth in current quarter could jump up 6.60%, compared to the corresponding quarter of last year. Wall Street analysts also predicted that in 2024, the company’s y-o-y revenues would reach $2.71 billion, representing an increase of 6.70% from the revenues reported in the last year’s results.

Revisions could be a useful indicator to get insight on short-term price movement; so for the company, there were no upward and no downward review(s) in last seven days. We see that WAL’s technical picture suggests that short-term indicators denote the stock is a 50% Sell on average. However, medium term indicators have put the stock in the category of 50% Sell while long term indicators on average have been pointing out that it is a 100% Sell.

15 analyst(s) have assigned their ratings of the stock’s forecast evaluation on a scale of 1.00-5.00 to indicate a strong buy to a strong sell recommendation. The stock is rated as a Hold by 1 analyst(s), 14 recommend it as a Buy and 0 called the WAL stock Overweight. In the meantime, 0 analyst(s) believe the stock as Underweight and 0 think it is a Sell. Thus, investors eager to increase their holdings of the company’s stock will have an opportunity to do so as the average rating for the stock is Buy.

The stock’s technical analysis shows that the PEG ratio is about 0, with the price of WAL currently trading nearly 12.16% and 7.08% away from the simple moving averages for 20 and 50 days respectively. The Relative Strength Index (RSI, 14) currently indicates a reading of 53.19, while the 7-day volatility ratio is showing 7.63% which for the 30-day chart, stands at 17.16%. Furthermore, Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL)’s beta value is 1.37, and its average true range (ATR) is 3.75. The company’s stock has been forecasted to trade at an average price of $57.03 over the course of the next 52 weeks, with a low of $32.00 and a high of $71.00. Based on these price targets, the low is 9.68% off current price, whereas the price has to move -100.4% to reach the yearly target high. Additionally, analysts’ median price of $60.00 is likely to be welcomed by investors because it represents a decrease of -69.35% from the current levels.

A comparison of Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL) with its peers suggests the former has fared considerably weaker in the market. WAL showed an intraday change of -2.53% in last session, and over the past year, it shrunk by -53.14%%. In comparison, Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) has moved higher at 0.07% on the day and was down -5.52% over the past 12 months. On the other hand, the price of Glacier Bancorp Inc. (GBCI) has fallen -1.08% on the day. The stock, however, is off -37.02% from where it was a year ago. Additionally, there is a loss of -1.26% for National Bank Holdings Corporation (NBHC) in last trading while the stock has seen an overall depriciation of -22.15%% over the past year. The PE ratio stands at 4.04 for Western Alliance Bancorporation, compared to 11.68 for Wells Fargo & Company, and 10.92 for Glacier Bancorp Inc.. Other than that, the overall performance of the S&P 500 during the last trading session shows that it gained 0.88%. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Slipped by -0.11%.

Data on historical trading for Western Alliance Bancorporation (NYSE:WAL) indicates that the trading volumes over the past 10 days have averaged 6.55 million and over the past 3 months, they’ve averaged 11.57 million. According to company’s latest data on outstanding shares, there are 108.10 million shares outstanding.

Nearly 0.20% of Western Alliance Bancorporation’s shares belong to company insiders and institutional investors own 86.90% of the company’s shares. The data on short interest also indicates that stock shorts accounted for 11.77 million shares as on May 14, 2023, resulting in a short ratio of 0.93. According to the data, the short interest in Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL) stood at 10.75% of shares outstanding as of May 14, 2023; the number of short shares registered in Apr 13, 2023 reached 7.81 million. The stock has fallen by -40.51% since the beginning of the year, thereby showing the potential of a further growth. This could raise investors’ confidence to be optimistic about the WAL stock heading into the next quarter.