Aflac Incorporated’s (AFL) -0.74% Retreat Justifies A Second Look

Aflac Incorporated (NYSE:AFL) at last check was buoying at $76.74 on Friday, September 15, with a fall of -0.74% from its closing price on previous day.

Taking a look at stock we notice that its last check on previous day was $77.31 and 5Y monthly beta was reading 0.93 with its price kept floating in the range of $76.53 and $77.42 on the day. Company’s P/E ratio for the trailing 12 months is 10.28. Considering stock’s 52-week price range provides that AFL hit a high price of $78.43 and saw its price falling to a low level of $56.03 during that period. Over a period of past 1-month, stock came adding 1.20% in its value.

With its current market valuation of $45.48 billion, Aflac Incorporated is set to declare its quarterly results on Nov 01, 2023. AFL Stock’s Forward Dividend of 1.68 and its yield of 2.19% are making investors’ thoughts stronger that it could climb further before the company announces its earnings for the current quarter. Analysts are in estimates of $1.46 per share for company’s earnings in the current quarter and are expecting its annual EPS growth moving up to $6 for 2023 with estimates of that growing to $6.17 in next year. These estimates are suggesting current year growth of 5.80% for EPS and 2.80% growth next year.

Analysts watching the company’s growth closely have provided estimates for its revenue growth with an average revenue estimate of $4.39 billion. They suggested that in the process company could generate revenue of as low as $4.21 billion which could climb up to $4.62 billion to hit a high. The average estimate is representing a decrease of -3.90% in sales growth from that of posted by the company in the same quarter of last year. In keeping analyst consensus estimate with, company is forecasted to be making an annual revenue of $17.84 billion in 2023, which will be -8.50% less from revenue generated by the company last year.

In last 7 days, analysts came adjusting their opinions about stock’s EPS with no upward and no downward revisions, an indication which could give clearer idea about the company’s short term price movement. In contrast, when we review AFL stock’s current outlook then short term indicators are assigning it an average of 100% Buy, while medium term indicators are categorizing the stock at an average of 100% Buy. Long term indicators are suggesting an average of 100% Buy for it.

According to ratings assigned by 16 analysts at the scale of 1 to 5 with 1.00 representing a strong buy and 5.00 suggesting a strong sell; 12 of them are recommending Aflac Incorporated (AFL) as a Hold, while 2 are in view that stock is a Buy. Recommendation by 0 analysts for the stock is an Underweight while number of those analysts who rated the stock as an Overweight is 1, whereas 1 of them are considering the stock as a Sell. When taken as whole, stock gets a rating of Overweight and that encourages the investors to exploit the opportunity and build their stake up in the company.

Digging deeper we become aware of the PEG ratio of the AFL stock which is currently positioned at 1.71. It further provides that stock’s current price level is 2.54% away from its 20-day simple moving average and is 3.94% off its SMA50. Its relative strength index (RSI) for 14-periods is oscillating at 64.17 while volatility remained at 1.09% over the past week which changes to 1.32% when measuring it over the past month. Beta is valued at 0.93, while measure of average true range or ATR is currently at 1.06. In predicting price targets of as low as $58.00 and as high as $86.00, analysts are in agreement on assigning the stock over the next 12 months average price target of $76.28. Stock’s current price level is 24.42% above from estimated low price target while it is -12.07% below the estimated high; and even if the AFL’s share succeeded to reach the median price of $77.00, then the outlook of -0.34% could come to the excitement of the investors.

In comparing Aflac Incorporated (AFL)’s stock with other industry players reveals that stock’s latest price change of -0.74% and that of 27.62% over the past 12 months is in competing position with that of The Cigna Group (CI) which saw its stock price raised by 0.25% in the recent trading and went through a decrease of -0.03% in past 12-month trading. Industry’s another major player Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU) has fall -0.23% down in latest trading session, but over the past year has faced arise of 5.13%, while MetLife Inc. (MET) was also down -0.20% however its price remained floating in the red at -0.92% over the same period. Aflac Incorporated has a P/E ratio of 10.28 against that of The Cigna Group’s 12.94 while Prudential Financial Inc. is showing 33.07 for the same. On the other hand, the S&P 500 Index is down -0.95% in the early deals today while the Dow Jones Industrial was dealinglower at -0.55%.

Having a second look at Aflac Incorporated (NYSE:AFL) provides that stock’s average daily trading volume for 3 months was 2.22 million, while it jumped to 2.36 million when we calculate an average volume for past 10 days. Number of outstanding shares of the stock stood at 600.74 million.

The percentage of outstanding shares held by the insiders is 0.10% while it is 60.60% for the institutional holders. The figures also indicate that as of Aug 30, 2023, number of stock’s short shares was 12.79 million which implies a short ratio of 5.6. This shows up a 2.15% of Short Interest in company’s outstanding shares on the day. In August the standing of shares short improved as it was 11.58 million in the previous month. Addition of 6.67% by stock’s current price to its year-to-date value in today’s trading is likely to be increasing investors’ interest in the stock as it is hinting an extended uptrend.