Matson - MATX Stock Forecast, Price & News

Matson, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides ocean transportation and logistics services. The company's Ocean Transportation segment offers ocean freight transportation services to the domestic non-contiguous economies of Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam, as well as to other island economies in Micronesia. It primarily transports dry containers of mixed commodities, refrigerated commodities, packaged foods and beverages, building materials, automobiles, and household goods; livestock; seafood; general sustenance cargo; and garments, footwear, e-commerce, and other retail merchandise. This segment also operates an expedited service from China to Long Beach, California, and various islands in the South Pacific, as well as Okinawa, Japan; and provides container stevedoring, refrigerated cargo services, inland transportation, container equipment maintenance, and other terminal services to ocean carriers on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai, as well as in the Alaska locations of Anchorage, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. In addition, the company offers vessel management and container transshipment services. Its Logistics segment provides multimodal transportation brokerage services, including domestic and international rail intermodal, long-haul and regional highway trucking, specialized hauling, flat-bed and project, less-than-truckload, and expedited freight services; less-than-container load consolidation and freight forwarding services; warehousing and distribution services; supply chain management services, and non-vessel operating common carrier freight forwarding services. The company serves the U.S. military, freight forwarders, retailers, consumer goods, automobile manufacturers, and other customers. The company was formerly known as Alexander & Baldwin Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Matson, Inc. in June 2012. Matson, Inc. was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts recently commented on MATX shares. Stifel Nicolaus downgraded shares of Matson from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating and cut their target price for the stock from $131.00 to $93.00 in a research report on Tuesday, August 2nd. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Matson from a "strong-buy" rating to a "buy" rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 2nd.

Matson Stock Up 1.4 %

Shares of Matson stock traded up $1.15 during trading on Thursday, reaching $85.82. 170 shares of the company traded hands, compared to its average volume of 319,992. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24, a current ratio of 1.76 and a quick ratio of 1.76. Matson has a 1-year low of $68.36 and a 1-year high of $125.34. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $79.76 and a 200-day moving average price of $91.25. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.35 billion, a PE ratio of 2.52 and a beta of 1.20.

Matson (NYSE:MATX - Get Rating) last released its earnings results on Monday, August 1st. The shipping company reported $9.49 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $9.38 by $0.11. Matson had a net margin of 29.33% and a return on equity of 79.22%. The company had revenue of $1.26 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.35 billion. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Matson will post 29.88 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Matson Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 1st. Shareholders of record on Thursday, August 4th will be paid a dividend of $0.31 per share. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.44%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, August 3rd. This is a positive change from Matson's previous quarterly dividend of $0.30. Matson's payout ratio is 3.69%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Matson

In other Matson news, SVP Christopher A. Scott sold 339 shares of the business's stock in a transaction on Wednesday, June 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $83.94, for a total transaction of $28,455.66. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now owns 9,994 shares in the company, valued at approximately $838,896.36. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. In related news, SVP Christopher A. Scott sold 339 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, June 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $83.94, for a total transaction of $28,455.66. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 9,994 shares in the company, valued at $838,896.36. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Matthew J. Cox sold 5,000 shares of the company's stock in a transaction dated Thursday, June 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $90.86, for a total transaction of $454,300.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 267,802 shares in the company, valued at $24,332,489.72. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 32,985 shares of company stock worth $2,688,341. 1.90% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.