Lincoln Electric - LECO Stock Forecast, Price & News

Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries, designs, develops, manufactures, and sells welding, cutting, and brazing products worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Americas Welding, International Welding, and The Harris Products Group. It offers welding products, including arc welding power sources, plasma cutters, wire feeding systems, robotic welding packages, integrated automation systems, fume extraction equipment, consumable electrodes, fluxes and welding accessories, and specialty welding consumables and fabrication products. The company's product offering also includes computer numeric controlled plasma and oxy-fuel cutting systems, and regulators and torches used in oxy-fuel welding, cutting, and brazing; and consumables used in the brazing and soldering alloys market. In addition, it is involved in the retail business in the United States. Further, the company manufactures copper and aluminum headers, distributor assemblies, and manifolds for the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning sector in the United States and Mexico. The company serves general fabrication, energy and process, automotive and transportation, and construction and infrastructure industries, as well as heavy fabrication, ship building, and maintenance and repair markets. It sells its products directly to users of welding products, as well as through industrial distributors, retailers, and agents. The company was founded in 1895 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.

Lincoln Electric Stock Up 0.5 %

LECO Stock traded up $0.77 during midday trading on Monday, reaching $148.07. The company had a trading volume of 180,153 shares, compared to its average volume of 278,496. The company has a 50 day moving average of $130.29 and a two-hundred day moving average of $130.88. The company has a current ratio of 1.62, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.78. Lincoln Electric has a 1 year low of $118.17 and a 1 year high of $148.54. The company has a market capitalization of $8.58 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.19, a PEG ratio of 1.20 and a beta of 1.16.

Lincoln Electric (NASDAQ:LECO - Get Rating) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 28th. The industrial products company reported $2.18 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $1.98 by $0.20. Lincoln Electric had a return on equity of 50.64% and a net margin of 10.15%. The firm had revenue of $969.59 million during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $936.62 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $1.67 earnings per share. The business's revenue for the quarter was up 17.3% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts expect that Lincoln Electric will post 8.2 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Lincoln Electric Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, October 14th. Investors of record on Friday, September 30th will be given a dividend of $0.56 per share. This represents a $2.24 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.51%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, September 29th. Lincoln Electric's payout ratio is presently 36.78%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms recently commented on LECO. Morgan Stanley increased their target price on shares of Lincoln Electric from $126.00 to $136.00 and gave the company an "equal weight" rating in a research note on Monday, August 1st. Stifel Nicolaus cut their target price on shares of Lincoln Electric from $134.00 to $122.00 in a research note on Monday, July 18th. StockNews.com raised shares of Lincoln Electric from a "buy" rating to a "strong-buy" rating in a research note on Monday, August 1st. Robert W. Baird increased their target price on shares of Lincoln Electric from $143.00 to $150.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 28th. Finally, Seaport Res Ptn restated a "neutral" rating on shares of Lincoln Electric in a research report on Monday, August 1st. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus target price of $147.60.