IDEX Co. (NYSE:IEX) Short Interest Down 7.1% in March

IDEX Co. (NYSE:IEX) was the target of a large decrease in short interest during the month of March. As of March 31st, there was short interest totalling 748,600 shares, a decrease of 7.1% from the March 15th total of 805,500 shares. Currently, 1.0% of the shares of the stock are sold short. Based on an average trading volume of 377,800 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 2.0 days.

Institutional Trading of IDEX

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in IEX. Morgan Stanley raised its stake in IDEX by 274.1% during the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 2,151,334 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $491,214,000 after buying an additional 1,576,263 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in IDEX during the 4th quarter worth $237,425,000. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD raised its stake in IDEX by 12.7% during the 4th quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 7,409,706 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $1,608,722,000 after buying an additional 833,772 shares during the period. Alecta Tjanstepension Omsesidigt raised its stake in IDEX by 420.8% during the 4th quarter. Alecta Tjanstepension Omsesidigt now owns 781,172 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $169,600,000 after buying an additional 631,172 shares during the period. Finally, Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado raised its stake in IDEX by 4,080.8% during the 4th quarter. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado now owns 313,725 shares of the industrial products company’s stock worth $68,113,000 after buying an additional 306,221 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 97.96% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on IEX shares. Citigroup increased their price target on IDEX from $254.00 to $277.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, April 8th. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $255.00 price objective on shares of IDEX in a research report on Thursday, March 21st. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus upgraded IDEX from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price objective for the company from $215.00 to $265.00 in a research report on Thursday, February 8th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, IDEX has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $238.00.

IDEX Stock Performance

IEX stock opened at $230.39 on Tuesday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $236.13 and its 200-day moving average is $215.58. The company has a quick ratio of 2.05, a current ratio of 2.89 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.37. The company has a market cap of $17.44 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.39, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.32 and a beta of 0.97. IDEX has a twelve month low of $183.76 and a twelve month high of $246.36.

IDEX (NYSE:IEX) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, February 6th. The industrial products company reported $1.83 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.78 by $0.05. The company had revenue of $788.90 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $767.96 million. IDEX had a return on equity of 18.56% and a net margin of 18.21%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was down 2.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $2.01 EPS. Equities research analysts forecast that IDEX will post 8.35 EPS for the current year.

IDEX Company Profile

IDEX Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides applied solutions worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Fluid & Metering Technologies (FMT), Health & Science Technologies (HST), and Fire & Safety/Diversified Products (FSDP). The FMT segment designs, produces, and distributes positive displacement pumps, valves, small volume provers, flow meters, injectors, and other fluid-handling pump modules and systems, as well as flow monitoring and other services for the food, chemical, general industrial, water and wastewater, agricultural, and energy industries.