What Did We Note About Insider Trading At Western Midstream Partners LP (NYSE: WES)?

Western Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:WES) price is hovering higher on Tuesday, September 19, jumping 0.86% above its previous close.

A look at today’s price movement shows that the recent level at last check reads $26.14, with intraday deals fluctuating between $25.71 and $26.24. The company’s 5Y monthly beta was ticking 2.68 while its P/E ratio in the trailing 12-month period read 9.86. Taking into account the 52-week price action we note that the stock hit a 52-week high of $28.80 and 52-week low of $22.94. The stock subtracted -3.64% on its value in the past month.

Western Midstream Partners LP, which has a market valuation of $10.25 billion, is expected to release its quarterly earnings report Oct 31, 2023 – Nov 06, 2023. The company stock has a Forward Dividend ratio of 2.25, while the dividend yield is 8.53%. It is understandable that investor optimism is growing ahead of the company’s current quarter results. Analysts tracking WES have forecast the quarterly EPS to grow by 0.65 per share this quarter, while the same analysts predict the annual EPS to hit $2.56 for the year 2023 and up to $3.13 for 2024. In this case, analysts estimate an annual EPS growth of -14.70% for the year and 22.30% for the next year.

On average, analysts have forecast the company’s revenue for the quarter will hit $823.82 million, with the likely lows of $720 million and highs of $935.36 million. The average estimate suggests sales growth for the quarter will likely fall by -4.30% when compared to those recorded in the same quarter in the last financial year. Staying with the analyst view, there is a consensus estimate of $3.15 billion for the company’s annual revenue in 2023. Per this projection, the revenue is forecast to grow -3.10% below that which the company brought in 2023.

Revisions to the company’s EPS highlights a short term direction of a stock’s price movement, which in the last 7 days came up with 1 upward and no downward reviews. On the technical perspective front, indicators give WES a short term outlook of 100% Sell on average. Looking at the stock’s medium term indicators we note that it is averaging as a 50% Buy, while an average of long term indicators are currently assigning the stock as 100% Sell.

Here is a look at the average analyst rating for the stock as represented on a scale of 1.00 to 5.00, with the extremes of 1.00 and 5.00 suggesting the stock is strong buy or strong sell respectively. Specifically, 14 analysts have assigned WES a recommendation rating as follows: 5 rate it as a Hold; 6 advise Buy while 2 analyst(s) assign an Overweight rating. 0 analyst(s) have tagged the Western Midstream Partners LP (WES) stock as Underweight, with 1 recommending Sell. In general, analysts have rated the stock Overweight, a scenario likely to bolster investors out for an opportunity to add to their holdings of the company’s shares.

If we dive deeper into the stock’s performance we see the positive picture represented by the PEG ratio, currently standing at 2.59. The overview shows that WES’s price is at present -0.64% off the SMA20 and -3.13% from the SMA50. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) metric on the 14-day timeframe is pointing at 46.31, with weekly volatility standing at 1.57%. The indicator jumps to 1.84% when calculated based on the past 30 days. Western Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:WES)’s beta value is holding at 2.67, while the average true range (ATR) indicator is currently reading 0.52. Considering analysts have assigned the stock a price target range of $24.00-$35.00 as the low and high respectively, we find the trailing 12-month average consensus price target to be $30.57. Based on this estimate, we see that today’s price at last check is roughly 8.95% off the estimated low and -32.78% off the forecast high. Investors will no doubt be excited to see the share price fall to $30.50, which is the median consensus price, and at that level WES would be -15.71% from recent price.

An analysis of the Western Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:WES) stock in terms of its daily trading volume indicates that the 3-month average is 1.02 million. However, this figure increases on the past 10-day timeline to an average of 1.8 million.

Current records show that the company has 384.61M in outstanding shares. The insiders’ percentage holdings are 0.10% of outstanding shares while the percentage share held by institutions stands at 92.30%. The stats also highlight that short interest as of Aug 30, 2023, stood at 5.41 million shares, which puts the short ratio at the time at 5.95. From this we can glean that short interest is 1.41% of company’s current outstanding shares. Notably, we see that shares short in August rose slightly given the previous month’s figure stood at 4.91 million. But the -0.50% downside, the stock’s price has registered year-to-date as of today’s value, will likely reignite investor interest given the prospect of it rallying even higher.