Heartland Express, Inc (NASDAQ:HTLD) price on Friday, March 21, fall -0.64% below its previous day’s close as a downside momentum from buyers pushed the stock’s value to $9.28.
A look at the stock’s price movement, the close in the last trading session was $9.34, moving within a range at $9.14 and $9.33. The beta value (5-Year monthly) was 0.797. Turning to its 52-week performance, $13.67 and $9.11 were the 52-week high and 52-week low respectively. Overall, HTLD moved -12.20% over the past month.
Heartland Express, Inc’s market cap currently stands at around $728.94 million, with investors looking forward to this quarter’s earnings report slated for on 2025-Jan-27. The company has a Forward Dividend ratio of 0.08, with its dividend yield at 0.86%. 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 241.37M for the company’s revenue for the quarter, with a low and high estimate of 239.8M and 242.3M respectively. The average forecast suggests down to a -10.71% 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 1.03B, representing a -1.40% decline 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 HTLD is a 100% Sell. On the other hand, the stock is on average a 100% Sell as suggested by medium term indicators while long term indicators are putting the stock in 100% Sell category.
4 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 3 analyst(s) rate the stock as a Hold, 0 recommend HTLD as a Buy and 0 give it an Overweight rating. Meanwhile, 0 analyst(s) rate the stock as Underweight and 1 say it is a Sell. As such, the average rating for the stock is Hold which could provide an opportunity for investors keen on increasing their holdings of the company’s stock.
HTLD’s current price about -5.30% and -13.26% off the 20-day and 50-day simple moving averages respectively. The Relative Strength Index (RSI, 14) currently prints 29.92, while 7-day volatility ratio is 1.94% and 2.74% in the 30-day chart. Further, Heartland Express, Inc (HTLD) has a beta value of 0.97, and an average true range (ATR) of 0.27. Analysts have given the company’s stock an average 52-week price target of $17, forecast between a low of $14 and high of $18. Looking at the price targets, the low is -50.86% off current price level while to achieve the yearly target high, price needs to move -93.97%. Nonetheless, investors will most likely welcome a -83.19% jump to $17 which is the analysts’ median price.
If we refocus on Heartland Express, Inc (NASDAQ:HTLD), historical trading data shows that trading volumes averaged 0.62 over the past 10 days and 466.79K over the past 3 months. The company’s latest data on shares outstanding shows there are 78.52 million shares.
The 43.77% of Heartland Express, Inc’s shares are in the hands of company insiders while institutional holders own 51.02% of the company’s shares. Also important is the data on short interest which shows that short shares stood at 0.85 million on 2025-02-28, giving us a short ratio of 1.55. The data shows that as of 2025-02-28 short interest in Heartland Express, Inc (HTLD) stood at 219.0 of shares outstanding, with shares short falling to 0.99 million registered in 2025-01-31. Current price change has pushed the stock -17.29% YTD, which shows the potential for further growth is there. It is this reason that could see investor optimism for the HTLD stock continues to rise going into the next quarter.
