New Lifetime High Today: Aetna (AET)
Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer.
Trade-Ideas LLC identified
(
) as a new lifetime high 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 $272.9 million.
- AET has traded 29,432 shares today.
- AET is trading at a new lifetime high.
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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 1%. AET has a PE ratio of 17.6. Currently there are 12 analysts that rate Aetna a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 6 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Aetna has been 2.2 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Aetna has a market cap of $34.9 billion and is part of the health care sector and health services industry. The stock has a beta of 0.73 and a short float of 1.2% with 1.48 days to cover. Shares are up 15% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Thursday.
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Analysis:
rates Aetna as a
. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, revenue growth, reasonable valuation levels, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and notable return on equity. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.
Highlights from the ratings report include:
- Compared to its closing price of one year ago, AET's share price has jumped by 39.22%, exceeding the performance of the broader market during that same time frame. Regarding the stock's future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, AET should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.
- Despite its growing revenue, the company underperformed as compared with the industry average of 18.5%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues rose by 12.0%. 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.
- The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.59, 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 0.54, displays a potential problem in covering short-term cash needs.
- The return on equity has improved slightly when compared to the same quarter one year prior. This can be construed as a modest strength in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Health Care Providers & Services industry and the overall market on the basis of return on equity, AETNA INC has outperformed in comparison with the industry average, but has underperformed when compared to that of the S&P 500.
- You can view the full Aetna Ratings Report.
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