KLA - KLAC Stock Forecast, Price & News

KLA Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets process control and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and related nanoelectronics industries worldwide. The company offers chip and wafer manufacturing products, including defect inspection and review systems, metrology solutions, in situ process monitoring products, computational lithography software, and data analytics systems for chip manufacturers to manage yield throughout the semiconductor fabrication process. It also provides reticle manufacturing products, such as reticle inspection, metrology, and data analytics systems for mask shops; and packaging manufacturing products comprising wafer inspection and metrology, die sorting and inspection, IC component inspection and metrology, data analytics, wafer processing systems, and IC substrate production processes. In addition, the company offers compound semiconductor, power device, light emitting diode, and microelectromechanical system manufacturing products; data storage media/head manufacturing products; general purpose/lab applications; and previous-generation KLA systems. Further, it provides wafer processing solutions; printed circuit boards, and display and inspection components; and other services. The company was formerly known as KLA-Tencor Corporation and changed its name to KLA Corporation in July 2019. KLA Corporation was incorporated in 1975 and is headquartered in Milpitas, California.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on the company. UBS Group reduced their price objective on KLA from $360.00 to $345.00 and set a "neutral" rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, June 28th. Barclays cut their target price on KLA from $365.00 to $325.00 and set an "equal weight" rating on the stock in a report on Monday, July 25th. Evercore ISI set a $425.00 target price on KLA in a report on Monday, June 20th. Wells Fargo & Company cut their target price on KLA from $400.00 to $375.00 and set an "overweight" rating on the stock in a report on Friday, July 15th. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft cut their target price on KLA from $425.00 to $385.00 in a report on Monday, July 18th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have given a buy rating to the company's stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $425.16.

KLA Stock Performance

KLA stock opened at $358.32 on Wednesday. The stock's 50 day simple moving average is $340.65 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $346.70. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 4.76, a quick ratio of 1.75 and a current ratio of 2.50. The stock has a market cap of $53.47 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.36, a PEG ratio of 1.28 and a beta of 1.33. KLA has a fifty-two week low of $282.83 and a fifty-two week high of $457.12.

KLA (NASDAQ:KLAC - Get Rating) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 28th. The semiconductor company reported $5.81 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $5.46 by $0.35. KLA had a return on equity of 95.80% and a net margin of 36.06%. The business had revenue of $2.49 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $2.42 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $4.43 EPS. The business's revenue was up 29.2% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, analysts expect that KLA will post 24.83 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

KLA Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 1st. Stockholders of record on Monday, August 15th will be paid a $1.30 dividend. This represents a $5.20 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.45%. This is a positive change from KLA's previous quarterly dividend of $1.05. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, August 12th. KLA's dividend payout ratio is 19.18%.

Insider Transactions at KLA

In other KLA news, CFO Bren D. Higgins sold 5,330 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $383.11, for a total value of $2,041,976.30. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 52,145 shares in the company, valued at approximately $19,977,270.95. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. In other KLA news, CFO Bren D. Higgins sold 5,330 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $383.11, for a total transaction of $2,041,976.30. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 52,145 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $19,977,270.95. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CFO Bren D. Higgins sold 1,020 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, May 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $337.02, for a total transaction of $343,760.40. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 64,257 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $21,655,894.14. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 7,303 shares of company stock worth $2,739,490 in the last three months. Corporate insiders own 0.14% of the company's stock.