Discover Financial Services, through its subsidiaries, provides digital banking products and services, and payment services in the United States. It operates in two segments, Digital Banking and Payment Services. The Digital Banking segment offers Discover-branded credit cards to individuals; private student loans, personal loans, home loans, and other consumer lending; and direct-to-consumer deposit products comprising savings accounts, certificates of deposit, money market accounts, IRA certificates of deposit, IRA savings accounts and checking accounts, and sweep accounts. The Payment Services segment operates the PULSE, an automated teller machine, debit, and electronic funds transfer network; and Diners Club International, a payments network that issues Diners Club branded charge cards and/or provides card acceptance services, as well as offers payment transaction processing and settlement services. The company was incorporated in 1960 and is based in Riverwoods, Illinois.
Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades
Several brokerages recently weighed in on DFS. Wolfe Research downgraded shares of Discover Financial Services from an "outperform" rating to a "peer perform" rating and set a $97.00 target price on the stock. in a research note on Thursday, May 12th. Barclays decreased their price target on shares of Discover Financial Services from $140.00 to $133.00 and set an "overweight" rating on the stock in a report on Friday, July 22nd. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lowered their price objective on Discover Financial Services from $150.00 to $140.00 in a report on Friday, July 22nd. Credit Suisse Group cut their price target on Discover Financial Services to $134.00 in a report on Friday, July 22nd. Finally, Morgan Stanley lowered their target price on Discover Financial Services from $111.00 to $104.00 and set an "equal weight" rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, July 22nd. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Discover Financial Services currently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus price target of $127.56.
Discover Financial Services Price Performance
Shares of NYSE:DFS traded down $0.66 during mid-day trading on Monday, hitting $108.94. 34,510 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 1,877,540. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.43, a current ratio of 1.26 and a quick ratio of 1.26. The company has a market cap of $29.76 billion, a PE ratio of 7.14, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.24 and a beta of 1.45. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $100.41 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $108.78. Discover Financial Services has a twelve month low of $88.02 and a twelve month high of $135.69.
Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS - Get Rating) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, July 20th. The financial services provider reported $3.96 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.77 by $0.19. The business had revenue of $3.22 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.18 billion. Discover Financial Services had a net margin of 34.89% and a return on equity of 36.35%. Discover Financial Services's revenue for the quarter was down 9.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $5.55 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Discover Financial Services will post 15.32 EPS for the current fiscal year.
Discover Financial Services Announces Dividend
The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 8th. Investors of record on Thursday, August 25th will be issued a $0.60 dividend. This represents a $2.40 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.20%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, August 24th. Discover Financial Services's payout ratio is 15.63%.