First Trust Advisors LP Lowers Position in Open Text Corporation $OTEX

Key Points

• First Trust Advisors LP cut its Open Text stake by 35.9% in the first quarter, selling 4.12 million shares and leaving it with 7.37 million shares worth about $164.1 million.
• Wall Street sentiment is mixed but cautious: the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold,” with 4 Buy ratings and 10 Hold ratings, and analysts’ average price target sits at $33.67.
• Open Text beat expectations in its latest quarter, reporting EPS of $1.01 versus the $0.94 estimate and revenue of $1.28 billion, while also paying a quarterly dividend that annualizes to a 5.0% yield.

First Trust Advisors LP decreased its holdings in shares of Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX - Free Report) TSE: OTC by 35.9% in the 1st quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 7,369,594 shares of the software maker's stock after selling 4,124,120 shares during the period. First Trust Advisors LP owned approximately 3.04% of Open Text worth $164,119,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Brandes Investment Partners LP boosted its position in shares of Open Text by 1.2% during the 4th quarter. Brandes Investment Partners LP now owns 9,106,157 shares of the software maker's stock valued at $296,679,000 after acquiring an additional 106,766 shares during the last quarter. Value Partners Investments Inc. increased its position in shares of Open Text by 30.0% in the first quarter. Value Partners Investments Inc. now owns 2,413,989 shares of the software maker's stock worth $53,687,000 after purchasing an additional 556,534 shares during the last quarter. Montrusco Bolton Investments Inc. bought a new position in shares of Open Text in the fourth quarter worth approximately $7,140,000. Munich Reinsurance Co Stock Corp in Munich raised its stake in Open Text by 59.0% in the fourth quarter. Munich Reinsurance Co Stock Corp in Munich now owns 427,564 shares of the software maker's stock valued at $14,121,000 after purchasing an additional 158,698 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. purchased a new stake in Open Text in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $1,974,000. 70.37% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts have commented on the stock. Royal Bank Of Canada cut their price target on shares of Open Text from $30.00 to $27.00 and set a "sector perform" rating for the company in a research note on Friday, May 8th. Scotia lowered their price objective on shares of Open Text from $50.00 to $40.00 and set a "sector outperform" rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, May 8th. Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a "hold (c-)" rating on shares of Open Text in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. Citigroup cut their target price on shares of Open Text from $26.00 to $25.00 and set a "neutral" rating for the company in a research report on Friday, May 8th. Finally, Barclays raised their price target on Open Text from $25.00 to $27.00 and gave the company an "equal weight" rating in a research report on Monday, May 11th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and ten have given a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of "Hold" and an average price target of $33.67.

Open Text Trading Down 2.5%

Shares of OTEX opened at $22.21 on Thursday. Open Text Corporation has a fifty-two week low of $19.77 and a fifty-two week high of $39.90. The firm has a market cap of $5.38 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 10.83 and a beta of 1.04. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $22.67 and a 200-day moving average price of $24.17. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.56, a quick ratio of 0.94 and a current ratio of 0.94.

Open Text (NASDAQ:OTEX - Get Free Report) TSE: OTC last released its earnings results on Thursday, May 7th. The software maker reported $1.01 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.94 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $1.28 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.26 billion. Open Text had a net margin of 9.91% and a return on equity of 24.77%. The firm's quarterly revenue was up 2.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $0.82 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Open Text Corporation will post 4.05 earnings per share for the current year.

Open Text Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, June 19th. Stockholders of record on Friday, June 5th were issued a $0.275 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Friday, June 5th. This represents a $1.10 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 5.0%. Open Text's payout ratio is currently 53.66%.

About Open Text

Open Text Corporation is a Canadian enterprise information management (EIM) software company that develops solutions for organizations seeking to manage, protect and extract insight from their unstructured and structured data. The company's platform encompasses document management, records management, digital asset management and archiving, enabling companies to govern information across its lifecycle.

Open Text's product suite includes content services, business process management, customer experience management, analytics and security products.

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