MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) Rating Lowered to Hold at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods

MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) was downgraded by equities researchers at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods from a “moderate buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note issued to investors on Monday,Zacks.com reports.

MKTX has been the subject of several other research reports. Benchmark reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of MarketAxess in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. UBS Group lowered shares of MarketAxess from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and dropped their price objective for the company from $200.00 to $167.00 in a research report on Friday, July 31st. Morgan Stanley cut their target price on shares of MarketAxess from $195.00 to $129.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, July 10th. Piper Sandler reduced their target price on shares of MarketAxess from $175.00 to $128.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, July 15th. Finally, Wall Street Zen lowered shares of MarketAxess from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 1st. One analyst has rated the stock with a Buy rating, eleven have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, MarketAxess currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $156.10.

MarketAxess Stock Performance

MKTX opened at $162.53 on Monday. MarketAxess has a 12-month low of $108.75 and a 12-month high of $195.96. The stock has a market cap of $5.72 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.17, a PEG ratio of 4.12 and a beta of 0.83. The business has a 50 day moving average of $124.96 and a 200-day moving average of $151.13. The company has a quick ratio of 2.17, a current ratio of 2.17 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.19.

MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, July 30th. The financial services provider reported $1.95 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.85 by $0.10. The company had revenue of $218.41 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $216.70 million. MarketAxess had a return on equity of 22.48% and a net margin of 35.22%.The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down .5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.00 EPS. On average, equities research analysts expect that MarketAxess will post 8.04 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of MarketAxess during the second quarter worth $453,941,000. Primecap Management Co. CA boosted its position in shares of MarketAxess by 42.4% in the fourth quarter. Primecap Management Co. CA now owns 3,175,425 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $575,546,000 after acquiring an additional 944,830 shares during the period. AQR Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 169.0% in the fourth quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 2,558,097 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $463,655,000 after acquiring an additional 1,607,009 shares in the last quarter. North Reef Capital Management LP grew its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 16.5% in the first quarter. North Reef Capital Management LP now owns 1,875,000 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $309,338,000 after acquiring an additional 265,670 shares in the last quarter. Finally, State Street Corp increased its position in MarketAxess by 4.6% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 1,532,696 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $342,312,000 after acquiring an additional 67,290 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 99.01% of the company’s stock.

About MarketAxess

MarketAxess Holdings Inc operates a leading global electronic trading platform specializing in fixed-income securities and related products. The company’s network enables institutional investors and broker-dealers to trade corporate bonds, municipal securities, emerging markets debt, U.S. Treasuries and credit default swaps in an automated, multi-dealer environment. MarketAxess also offers portfolio trading, data analytics, best-execution tools and post-trade services to streamline workflows and enhance price discovery across its marketplace.

In addition to core voice-like trading protocols, MarketAxess provides Open Trading®, an anonymous, all-to-all trading protocol designed to improve liquidity and transaction efficiency.