The trading price of Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV) closed lower on Tuesday, December 10, and closing at $33.44, -1.36% lower than its previous close.
Traders who pay close attention to intraday price movement should know that it fluctuated between $33.29 and $34.19. In examining the 52-week price action we see that the stock hit a 52-week high of $36.12 and a 52-week low of $23.58. Over the past month, the stock has gained 5.22% in value.
Southwest Airlines Co, whose market valuation is $20.06 billion at the time of this writing, is expected to release its quarterly earnings report in January. The dividend yield on the company stock is 2.15%, while its Forward Dividend ratio is 0.72. Investors’ optimism about the company’s current quarter earnings report is understandable. Analysts have predicted the quarterly earnings per share to grow by 0.38 per share this quarter, however they have predicted annual earnings per share of 0.76 for current year and 1.61 for next year.
Analysts have forecast the company to bring in revenue of 6.88B for the current quarter, with the likely lows of 6.83B and highs of 6.98B. From the analysts’ viewpoint, the consensus estimate for the company’s annual revenue is 27.45B.
On the technical side, indicators suggest LUV has a 100% Buy on average for the short term. According to the data of the stock’s medium term indicators, the stock is currently averaging as a 100% Buy, while an average of long term indicators suggests that the stock is currently 100% Buy.
Here is the average analyst rating on the stock as represented by 1.00 to 5.00, with the extremes of 1.00 and 5.00 suggesting the stock should be considered as either strong buy or strong sell respectively. The number of analysts that have assigned LUV a recommendation rating is 16. Out of them, 8 rate it a Hold, while 8 recommend Buy, whereas 0 assign an Overweight rating. 0 analyst(s) have tagged Southwest Airlines Co (LUV) as Underweight, while 0 advise Sell. Analysts have rated the stock Buy, likely urging investors to take advantage of the opportunity to add to their holdings of the company’s shares.
A quick review shows that LUV’s price is currently 2.07% off the SMA20 and 6.20% off the SMA50. The RSI metric on the 14-day chart is currently showing 58.07, and weekly volatility stands at 3.29%. When measured over the past 30 days, the indicator reaches 2.69%. Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV)’s beta value is currently sitting at 1.16, while the Average True Range indicator is currently displaying 0.93. With analysts defining $24-$36 as the low and high price targets, we arrive at a consensus price target of $30 for the trailing 12-month period. The current price is about 28.23% off the estimated low and -7.66% off the forecast high, based on this estimate. Investors will be thrilled if LUV’s share price rises to $30, which is the median consensus price. At that level, LUV’s share price would be 10.29% above current price.
To see how Southwest Airlines Co stock has been performing in comparison to its peers in the industry, here are the numbers: LUV stock’s performance was -1.36% in the latest trading, and 15.03% in the past year.
An evaluation of the daily trading volume of Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE:LUV) indicates that the 3-month average is 7.74 million. However, this figure has increased over the past 10 days to an average of 7.64.
Currently, records show that 599.74 million of the company’s shares remain outstanding. The insiders hold 1.06% of outstanding shares, whereas institutions hold 90.34%. The stats also highlight that short interest as of 2024-11-29, stood at 35.07 million shares, resulting in a short ratio of 5.7 at that time. From this, we can conclude that short interest is 742.00 of the company’s total outstanding shares. It is noteworthy that short shares in November were down slightly from the previous month’s figure, which was 39.78 million. However, since the stock’s price has seen 15.79% year-to-date, investors’ interest is likely to be reignited due to its potential to move even higher.
