Lazard - LAZ Stock Forecast, Price & News

Lazard Ltd, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a financial advisory and asset management firm in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Central and South America. It operates in two segments, Financial Advisory and Asset Management. The Financial Advisory segment offers various financial advisory services regarding mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, capital advisory, shareholder advisory, capital raising, sovereign advisory, and other strategic advisory matters. This segment serves corporate, partnership, institutional, government, sovereign, and individual clients across various industry areas, including consumers, financial institutions, healthcare and life sciences, industrials, power and energy/infrastructure, and real estate, as well as technology, telecommunication, and media and entertainment. The Asset Management segment offers a range of investment solutions, and investment and wealth management services in equity and fixed income strategies; asset allocation strategies; and alternative investments and private equity funds to corporations, public funds, sovereign entities, endowments and foundations, labor funds, financial intermediaries, and private clients. The company was founded in 1848 and is based in Hamilton, Bermuda.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have commented on LAZ shares. StockNews.com downgraded Lazard from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a research report on Friday, July 8th. Morgan Stanley downgraded Lazard from an "equal weight" rating to an "underweight" rating and cut their target price for the stock from $40.00 to $30.00 in a research report on Monday, July 18th. Piper Sandler cut their target price on Lazard from $45.00 to $44.00 and set an "overweight" rating for the company in a research report on Friday, July 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised their target price on Lazard from $32.00 to $36.00 and gave the stock a "neutral" rating in a research report on Thursday, August 4th. Finally, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods downgraded Lazard from a "market perform" rating to an "underperform" rating and cut their target price for the stock from $38.00 to $30.00 in a research report on Wednesday, July 13th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of "Hold" and a consensus target price of $39.71.

Lazard Trading Up 0.9 %

LAZ Stock opened at $37.59 on Tuesday. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $34.25 and a 200 day moving average price of $35.09. Lazard has a fifty-two week low of $30.72 and a fifty-two week high of $53.00. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.95 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 7.88 and a beta of 1.43. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.04, a current ratio of 1.70 and a quick ratio of 1.70.

Lazard (NYSE:LAZ - Get Rating) last released its earnings results on Thursday, July 28th. The asset manager reported $0.92 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.86 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $676.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $666.39 million. Lazard had a return on equity of 56.01% and a net margin of 16.85%. The business's revenue for the quarter was down 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm earned $1.28 EPS. Analysts expect that Lazard will post 3.98 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Lazard Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, August 19th. Stockholders of record on Monday, August 8th will be paid a $0.50 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Friday, August 5th. This represents a $2.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 5.32%. Lazard's dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 39.41%.

Insider Activity

In other news, President Alexander F. Stern sold 70,000 shares of Lazard stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 31st. The stock was sold at an average price of $35.29, for a total value of $2,470,300.00. Following the completion of the sale, the president now directly owns 209,258 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $7,384,714.82. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Insiders own 3.86% of the company's stock.