Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) Posts Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.55 EPS

Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday. The financial services provider reported $1.96 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.41 by $0.55, Briefing.com reports. Assured Guaranty had a net margin of 53.82% and a return on equity of 11.82%. The firm had revenue of $245.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $194.78 million. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $1.12 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was down 13.4% compared to the same quarter last year.

Assured Guaranty Price Performance

Assured Guaranty stock opened at $79.62 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29, a quick ratio of 0.88 and a current ratio of 0.88. The company has a market cap of $4.42 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 6.33 and a beta of 1.14. Assured Guaranty has a 1 year low of $49.84 and a 1 year high of $96.60. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $84.73 and a 200 day moving average price of $77.50.

Assured Guaranty Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 29th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, May 15th will be paid a dividend of $0.31 per share. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, May 14th. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.56%. This is an increase from Assured Guaranty’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.28. Assured Guaranty’s dividend payout ratio is currently 10.00%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Assured Guaranty

In other Assured Guaranty news, CEO Dominic Frederico sold 55,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, March 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $92.43, for a total transaction of $5,083,650.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 1,450,824 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $134,099,662.32. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. 5.10% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently commented on AGO. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods reiterated a “market perform” rating and issued a $92.00 price objective (up from $75.00) on shares of Assured Guaranty in a research report on Monday, April 1st. UBS Group upped their price target on shares of Assured Guaranty from $64.00 to $102.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, March 1st.

About Assured Guaranty

Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance, infrastructure, and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments.