Vestmark Advisory Solutions Inc. Purchases New Shares in Knowles Co. (NYSE:KN)

Vestmark Advisory Solutions Inc. purchased a new stake in Knowles Co. (NYSE:KN) during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor purchased 11,712 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock, valued at approximately $233,000.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also modified their holdings of the company. Pacer Advisors Inc. grew its stake in shares of Knowles by 54,279.3% in the third quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 2,621,626 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $47,268,000 after acquiring an additional 2,616,805 shares in the last quarter. Rhumbline Advisers grew its stake in shares of Knowles by 1.9% in the fourth quarter. Rhumbline Advisers now owns 275,317 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $5,487,000 after acquiring an additional 5,019 shares in the last quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. grew its stake in shares of Knowles by 2.9% in the third quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 9,475,339 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $169,135,000 after acquiring an additional 265,814 shares in the last quarter. Barclays PLC grew its stake in shares of Knowles by 340.0% in the third quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 145,401 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $2,622,000 after acquiring an additional 112,354 shares in the last quarter. Finally, BNP Paribas Financial Markets grew its stake in shares of Knowles by 74.6% in the third quarter. BNP Paribas Financial Markets now owns 31,166 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $562,000 after acquiring an additional 13,320 shares in the last quarter. 96.35% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities research analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Craig Hallum cut shares of Knowles from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and set a $17.00 price objective for the company. in a research report on Friday, February 14th. StockNews.com raised shares of Knowles from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, February 17th.

Knowles Trading Up 1.0 %

KN opened at $16.38 on Monday. Knowles Co. has a twelve month low of $15.00 and a twelve month high of $20.86. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $18.72 and a 200 day simple moving average of $18.45. The company has a quick ratio of 1.23, a current ratio of 1.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.44 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -6.18 and a beta of 1.42.

Knowles (NYSE:KN) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, February 13th. The communications equipment provider reported $0.22 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.23 by ($0.01). The company had revenue of $142.50 million during the quarter. Knowles had a positive return on equity of 5.52% and a negative net margin of 34.66%.

Knowles Profile

Knowles Corporation offers capacitors, radio frequency (RF) filtering products, balanced armature speakers, micro-acoustic microphones, and audio solutions in Asia, the United States, Europe, other Americas, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Precision Devices (PD); Medtech & Specialty Audio (MSA); and Consumer MEMS Microphones (CMM).