Aetna (AET) Down In Pre-Market Trading

Trade-Ideas LLC identified Aetna (AET) as a pre-market laggard candidate
By TheStreet Wire ,

Trade-Ideas LLC identified

Aetna

(

AET

) as a pre-market laggard candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Aetna as such a stock due to the following factors:

  • AET has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $311.7 million.
  • AET traded 44,310 shares today in the pre-market hours as of 9:29 AM.
  • AET is down 5.2% today from yesterday's close.

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More details on AET:

Aetna Inc. operates as a health care benefits company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Health Care, Group Insurance, and Large Case Pensions. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 0.9%. AET has a PE ratio of 16. Currently there are 13 analysts that rate Aetna a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 4 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Aetna has been 3.2 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Aetna has a market cap of $36.6 billion and is part of the health care sector and health services industry. The stock has a beta of 0.43 and a short float of 2.7% with 2.85 days to cover. Shares are up 18.5% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Tuesday.

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TheStreetRatings.com

Analysis:

TheStreet Quant Ratings

rates Aetna as a

buy

. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, reasonable valuation levels, solid stock price performance, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and good cash flow from operations. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

  • Despite its growing revenue, the company underperformed as compared with the industry average of 10.2%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 1.5%. This growth in revenue does not appear to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, displayed by a decline in earnings per share.
  • AETNA INC' earnings per share from the most recent quarter came in slightly below the year earlier quarter. This company has reported somewhat volatile earnings recently. But, we feel it is poised for EPS growth in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, AETNA INC increased its bottom line by earning $5.66 versus $5.35 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($7.55 versus $5.66).
  • The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.49, is low and is below the industry average, implying that there has been successful management of debt levels. Despite the fact that AET's debt-to-equity ratio is low, the quick ratio, which is currently 0.62, displays a potential problem in covering short-term cash needs.
  • Looking at where the stock is today compared to one year ago, we find that it is not only higher, but it has also clearly outperformed the rise in the S&P 500 over the same period, despite the company's weak earnings results. Turning our attention to the future direction of the stock, it goes without saying that even the best stocks can fall in an overall down market. However, in any other environment, this stock still has good upside potential despite the fact that it has already risen in the past year.

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