Valeo Financial Advisors LLC Sells 304 Shares of Blackstone Inc. $BX

Valeo Financial Advisors LLC lowered its stake in shares of Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX) by 2.4% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm owned 12,470 shares of the asset manager’s stock after selling 304 shares during the quarter. Valeo Financial Advisors LLC’s holdings in Blackstone were worth $1,865,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in BX. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC boosted its position in Blackstone by 519,669.1% during the second quarter. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC now owns 70,132,441 shares of the asset manager’s stock worth $10,490,411,000 after purchasing an additional 70,118,948 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its position in Blackstone by 1.6% during the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 67,997,581 shares of the asset manager’s stock worth $9,504,702,000 after purchasing an additional 1,102,949 shares during the period. Nuveen LLC bought a new position in Blackstone during the first quarter worth about $151,524,000. Amundi boosted its position in Blackstone by 69.3% during the first quarter. Amundi now owns 2,421,502 shares of the asset manager’s stock worth $323,000,000 after purchasing an additional 990,947 shares during the period. Finally, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boosted its position in Blackstone by 16.3% during the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 5,292,320 shares of the asset manager’s stock worth $739,761,000 after purchasing an additional 742,829 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 70.00% of the company’s stock.

Blackstone Trading Down 1.0%

Shares of BX opened at $166.73 on Tuesday. The company has a market capitalization of $122.90 billion, a P/E ratio of 44.82, a P/E/G ratio of 1.37 and a beta of 1.77. Blackstone Inc. has a 1-year low of $115.66 and a 1-year high of $200.96. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $173.61 and its 200 day simple moving average is $153.96. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61, a current ratio of 0.74 and a quick ratio of 0.74.

Blackstone (NYSE:BX) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 24th. The asset manager reported $1.21 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.10 by $0.11. The firm had revenue of $3.07 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.77 billion. Blackstone had a net margin of 20.83% and a return on equity of 20.47%. The business’s revenue was up 32.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.98 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts forecast that Blackstone Inc. will post 5.87 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Blackstone Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, August 11th. Shareholders of record on Monday, August 4th were paid a dividend of $1.03 per share. This represents a $4.12 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.5%. This is a boost from Blackstone’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.93. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, August 4th. Blackstone’s payout ratio is 110.75%.

Insider Activity

In other Blackstone news, major shareholder Bx Buzz Ml-1 Gp Llc sold 16,689,884 shares of Blackstone stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $6.26, for a total transaction of $104,478,673.84. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, major shareholder Holdings I. L.P. Blackstone purchased 1,189,532 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, July 18th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $25.22 per share, for a total transaction of $29,999,997.04. Following the completion of the purchase, the insider directly owned 4,178,771 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $105,388,604.62. This represents a 39.79% increase in their position. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. In the last three months, insiders bought 3,727,877 shares of company stock valued at $95,046,625 and sold 16,984,634 shares valued at $155,181,346. 1.00% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

BX has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. BNP Paribas Exane raised their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $166.00 to $178.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday, September 29th. Citigroup restated a “market perform” rating on shares of Blackstone in a research report on Saturday, July 19th. Dbs Bank upgraded shares of Blackstone to a “moderate buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 12th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised their price objective on shares of Blackstone from $168.00 to $180.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday, July 25th. Finally, Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c)” rating on shares of Blackstone in a research report on Saturday, September 27th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, nine have given a Buy rating and nine have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $175.53.

Blackstone Company Profile

Blackstone Inc is an alternative asset management firm specializing in real estate, private equity, hedge fund solutions, credit, secondary funds of funds, public debt and equity and multi-asset class strategies. The firm typically invests in early-stage companies. It also provide capital markets services.