Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS Has $1.81 Million Stock Position in MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX)

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS reduced its stake in MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) by 2.4% in the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm owned 8,017 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after selling 201 shares during the period. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS’s holdings in MarketAxess were worth $1,812,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. Congress Asset Management Co. acquired a new position in MarketAxess in the 4th quarter valued at $71,103,000. FMR LLC grew its position in shares of MarketAxess by 17.5% in the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 1,959,043 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $501,907,000 after purchasing an additional 291,134 shares during the last quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp increased its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 13.4% in the fourth quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 2,000,736 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $452,246,000 after purchasing an additional 236,497 shares during the period. Raymond James Financial Inc. acquired a new position in shares of MarketAxess during the 4th quarter worth about $46,079,000. Finally, Castle Hook Partners LP bought a new stake in MarketAxess during the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $42,967,000. Institutional investors own 99.01% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several brokerages have commented on MKTX. UBS Group dropped their price target on MarketAxess from $330.00 to $305.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, February 7th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods dropped their target price on shares of MarketAxess from $251.00 to $225.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, February 7th. Barclays decreased their price target on shares of MarketAxess from $256.00 to $225.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, February 7th. The Goldman Sachs Group cut their price objective on shares of MarketAxess from $235.00 to $210.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Monday, February 10th. Finally, Piper Sandler decreased their target price on MarketAxess from $265.00 to $240.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, January 7th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $254.78.

MarketAxess Stock Up 0.8 %

Shares of MKTX opened at $213.42 on Wednesday. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. has a 12 month low of $186.84 and a 12 month high of $296.68. The stock has a market cap of $8.04 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.36, a P/E/G ratio of 3.89 and a beta of 1.05. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $207.76 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $239.79.

MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, February 6th. The financial services provider reported $1.73 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.70 by $0.03. MarketAxess had a return on equity of 20.23% and a net margin of 33.56%. Equities research analysts expect that MarketAxess Holdings Inc. will post 7.79 EPS for the current fiscal year.

MarketAxess Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, March 5th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, February 19th were paid a $0.76 dividend. This represents a $3.04 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.42%. The ex-dividend date was Wednesday, February 19th. This is an increase from MarketAxess’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.74. MarketAxess’s payout ratio is currently 41.82%.

MarketAxess Company Profile

MarketAxess Holdings Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates an electronic trading platform for institutional investor and broker-dealer companies worldwide. The company offers trading technology that provides liquidity access in U.S. high-grade bonds, U.S. high-yield bonds, emerging market debt, eurobonds, municipal bonds, U.S.