Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV) price on Thursday, November 14, rose 0.12% above its previous day’s close as an upside momentum from buyers pushed the stock’s value to $32.42.
A look at the stock’s price movement, the close in the last trading session was $32.38, moving within a range at $32.29 and $33.07. The beta value (5-Year monthly) was 1.153. Turning to its 52-week performance, $35.18 and $23.46 were the 52-week high and 52-week low respectively. Overall, LUV moved 4.89% over the past month.
Southwest Airlines Co’s market cap currently stands at around $19.44 billion, with investors looking forward to this quarter’s earnings report slated for in December. The company has a Forward Dividend ratio of 0.72, with its dividend yield at 2.22%. As such, investors might be keen on an upside in the stock’s price ahead of the scheduled earnings report.
Analysts have a consensus estimate of 6.86B for the company’s revenue for the quarter, with a low and high estimate of 6.8B and 6.91B respectively. The average forecast suggests up to a 0.60% growth in sales growth compared to quarterly growth in the same period last fiscal year. Wall Street analysts have also projected the company’s year-on-year revenue to grow to 27.42B, representing a 5.09% jump on that reported in the last financial year.
Turning to the stock’s technical picture we see that short term indicators suggest on average that LUV is a 100% Buy. On the other hand, the stock is on average a 100% Buy as suggested by medium term indicators while long term indicators are putting the stock in 50% Buy category.
16 analyst(s) have given their forecast ratings for the stock on a scale of 1.00-5.00 for a strong buy to strong sell recommendation. A total of 8 analyst(s) rate the stock as a Hold, 8 recommend LUV as a Buy and 0 give it an Overweight rating. Meanwhile, 0 analyst(s) rate the stock as Underweight and 0 say it is a Sell. As such, the average rating for the stock is Buy which could provide an opportunity for investors keen on increasing their holdings of the company’s stock.
LUV’s current price about 4.66% and 7.23% off the 20-day and 50-day simple moving averages respectively. The Relative Strength Index (RSI, 14) currently prints 61.14, while 7-day volatility ratio is 3.09% and 3.05% in the 30-day chart. Further, Southwest Airlines Co (LUV) has a beta value of 1.16, and an average true range (ATR) of 0.97. Analysts have given the company’s stock an average 52-week price target of $38, forecast between a low of $24 and high of $72. Looking at the price targets, the low is 25.97% off current price level while to achieve the yearly target high, price needs to move -122.09%. Nonetheless, investors will most likely welcome a -17.21% jump to $38 which is the analysts’ median price.
If we refocus on Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV), historical trading data shows that trading volumes averaged 6.25 over the past 10 days and 8.35 million over the past 3 months. The company’s latest data on shares outstanding shows there are 596.51 million shares.
The 1.06% of Southwest Airlines Co’s shares are in the hands of company insiders while institutional holders own 98.13% of the company’s shares. Also important is the data on short interest which shows that short shares stood at 39.78 million on 2024-10-31, giving us a short ratio of 4.92. The data shows that as of 2024-10-31 short interest in Southwest Airlines Co (LUV) stood at 842.0 of shares outstanding, with shares short falling to 45.94 million registered in 2024-09-30. Current price change has pushed the stock 12.26% YTD, which shows the potential for further growth is there. It is this reason that could see investor optimism for the LUV stock continues to rise going into the next quarter.
