Wedbush Analysts Boost Earnings Estimates for Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CFG)

Wedbush Analysts Boost Earnings Estimates for Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CFG)

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Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CFG – Get Rating) – Research analysts at Wedbush lifted their Q1 2024 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for shares of Citizens Financial Group in a research report issued to clients and investors on Wednesday, March 29th. Wedbush analyst D. Chiaverini now anticipates that the bank will post earnings per share of $1.28 for the quarter, up from their prior estimate of $1.20. Wedbush has a “Neutral” rating and a $45.00 price target on the stock. The consensus estimate for Citizens Financial Group’s current full-year earnings is $4.98 per share. Wedbush also issued estimates for Citizens Financial Group’s Q2 2024 earnings at $1.29 EPS, Q3 2024 earnings at $1.30 EPS, Q4 2024 earnings at $1.27 EPS and FY2024 earnings at $5.15 EPS.

Citizens Financial Group (NYSE:CFG – Get Rating) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, January 17th. The bank reported $1.25 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.30 by ($0.05). The firm had revenue of $2.20 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.22 billion. Citizens Financial Group had a net margin of 22.86{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} and a return on equity of 11.24{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}.

CFG has been the subject of several other research reports. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on Citizens Financial Group from $48.00 to $53.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, December 5th. DA Davidson initiated coverage on Citizens Financial Group in a report on Wednesday, December 21st. They issued a “buy” rating and a $47.00 target price on the stock. Citigroup raised their price target on shares of Citizens Financial Group from $45.00 to $47.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday, February 22nd. Piper Sandler upped their price objective on shares of Citizens Financial Group from $47.00 to $51.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, February 15th. Finally, StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Citizens Financial Group in a research note on Thursday, March 16th. They set a “hold” rating for the company. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and twelve have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $47.78.

Citizens Financial Group Trading Down 1.2 {21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}

NYSE CFG opened at $30.77 on Friday. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $38.99 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $38.88. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.73, a quick ratio of 0.92 and a current ratio of 0.92. Citizens Financial Group has a twelve month low of $28.79 and a twelve month high of $48.98. The stock has a market cap of $14.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 7.54, a PEG ratio of 2.35 and a beta of 1.37.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Citizens Financial Group

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in CFG. Capital World Investors raised its stake in shares of Citizens Financial Group by 76.0{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in the 1st quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 19,002,482 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $861,383,000 after purchasing an additional 8,203,831 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in Citizens Financial Group in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $192,928,000. Morgan Stanley lifted its stake in Citizens Financial Group by 18.0{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 18,297,989 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $720,392,000 after acquiring an additional 2,785,751 shares in the last quarter. Prudential Financial Inc. boosted its position in Citizens Financial Group by 444.3{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} during the 2nd quarter. Prudential Financial Inc. now owns 2,852,267 shares of the bank’s stock worth $101,799,000 after acquiring an additional 2,328,251 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Eaton Vance Management boosted its position in Citizens Financial Group by 899.7{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} during the 3rd quarter. Eaton Vance Management now owns 2,319,890 shares of the bank’s stock worth $79,712,000 after acquiring an additional 2,087,841 shares during the last quarter. 88.96{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, Director Kevin Cummings sold 81,151 shares of Citizens Financial Group stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $44.40, for a total transaction of $3,603,104.40. Following the transaction, the director now owns 455,789 shares in the company, valued at approximately $20,237,031.60. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 0.53{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of the company’s stock.

Citizens Financial Group announced that its Board of Directors has approved a share buyback program on Friday, February 17th that allows the company to repurchase $1.15 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization allows the bank to reacquire up to 5.6{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996} of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually an indication that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

Citizens Financial Group Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, February 14th. Investors of record on Tuesday, January 31st were paid a dividend of $0.42 per share. This represents a $1.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 5.46{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, January 30th. Citizens Financial Group’s payout ratio is presently 41.18{21df340e03e388cc75c411746d1a214f72c176b221768b7ada42b4d751988996}.

Citizens Financial Group Company Profile

(Get Rating)

Citizens Financial Group, Inc engages in the provision of commercial banking services. It operates through the Consumer Banking and Commercial Banking segments. The Consumer Banking segment includes deposit products, mortgage and home equity lending, student loans, auto financing, credit cards, business loans, and wealth management and investment services.

See Also

Earnings History and Estimates for Citizens Financial Group (NYSE:CFG)

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FINRA Fines Wedbush for Allegedly Not Supervising Customers’ Trades

FINRA Fines Wedbush for Allegedly Not Supervising Customers’ Trades

Wedbush Securities will spend $975,000 for failing to supervise trades funneled as a result of the business and executed by third-occasion broker/dealers, according to disciplinary rates from the Fiscal Sector Regulatory Authority.

Wedbush Securities, a Los Angeles-dependent b/d with about 70 department places of work and much more than 500 registered staff members, offers brokerage, prosperity administration and financial investment banking solutions, according to FINRA’s letter of acceptance, waiver and consent submitted final week.

It also has a checkered record with regulators, in accordance to the FINRA submitting. In 2014, Wedbush agreed to shell out $2.44 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it failed to put correct hazard controls in spot for b/d shoppers (including thousands of abroad traders).

A person 12 months afterwards, the firm was fined $1.8 million by FINRA, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Trade Arca for similar lapses. The organization also paid out $1 million to NYSE Arca in early 2019 for again not getting ample threat controls in place to detect likely manipulative trades, according to FINRA.

Partly since of these actions, Wedbush stopped offering industry access products and services to clients in June 2015, according to the FINRA letter. But the company continued to enable some of its digital trading buyers access 3rd-bash platforms that routed customers’ orders to b/ds to execute the trades.

“Wedbush mistakenly believed that it was not required to assessment this buying and selling for any form of perhaps manipulative exercise considering the fact that it was no for a longer period providing industry accessibility,” the FINRA letter alleged. “Instead, the organization considered that the obligation to assessment this investing for possibly manipulative pursuits rested only with the executing broker-dealers.” 

This meant that the company wasn’t conducting supervisory opinions of many trades since it stopped giving direct market obtain in 2015. For that reason, Wedbush was in danger of missing instances of manipulative trading, which include “layering, spoofing, clean product sales, or marking the close or open up,” according to FINRA.

In a person occasion, Wedbush skipped likely layering in early 2017 from an institutional client (layering is when a trader helps make and then cancels trades they never intend to finish to effect share selling prices). The unnamed third-occasion b/d performing with Wedbush caught the probable scenarios of market manipulation that March and informed Wedbush, which subsequently closed the customer’s account, according to FINRA. 

But the regulator slammed the company for not taking actions to detect other customers likely manipulating trading, major to about 90 prospects contacting for additional than 3.4 million transactions with 13.5 billion shares that went unreviewed by Wedbush since 2015. 

The organization also failed to set devices into place to “review for likely layering and spoofing by the firm’s proprietary traders and all firm consumers,” in accordance to FINRA. The firm’s created techniques didn’t contain something requiring opinions for this sort of activity until finally June 2019, but even then, the treatments were being superior created to catch other forms of manipulative trades.

Wedbush’s regulatory skirmishes with regulators include 2018 expenses from the SEC for failing to supervise an staff working a pump-and-dump scheme, as nicely as joint FINRA/NYSE charges that Wedbush didn’t properly supervise 1 of its clearing customers. This is in addition to other fees centered on document fabrication and anti-money laundering-violations in whole, the firm’s mandatory disclosures on BrokerCheck contain 126 distinct “regulatory gatherings.” 

Wedbush did not answer to requests for comment.

In whole, about $82,143 of the $975,000 wonderful will be paid to FINRA, with the remainder heading to a number of other influenced exchanges, which include Nasdaq and the NYSE. The company also agreed to a censure whilst not admitting or denying the accusations included in the settlement.