New Lifetime High Today: Assurant (AIZ)

Trade-Ideas LLC identified Assurant (AIZ) as a new lifetime high candidate
By TheStreet Wire ,

Trade-Ideas LLC identified

Assurant

(

AIZ

) as a new lifetime high candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Assurant as such a stock due to the following factors:

  • AIZ has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $34.9 million.
  • AIZ has traded 3,691 shares today.
  • AIZ is trading at a new lifetime high.

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More details on AIZ:

Assurant, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides specialized insurance products and related services in North America, Latin America, Europe, and internationally. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 2.4%. AIZ has a PE ratio of 47. Currently there are 2 analysts that rate Assurant a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 5 rate it a hold.

The average volume for Assurant has been 581,200 shares per day over the past 30 days. Assurant has a market cap of $5.5 billion and is part of the financial sector and insurance industry. The stock has a beta of 0.67 and a short float of 1.8% with 3.09 days to cover. Shares are up 22.7% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Tuesday.

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TheStreetRatings.com

Analysis:

TheStreet Quant Ratings

rates Assurant as a

buy

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

Highlights from the ratings report include:

  • Although AIZ's debt-to-equity ratio of 0.25 is very low, it is currently higher than that of the industry average.
  • Net operating cash flow has increased to $360.58 million or 42.57% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, ASSURANT INC has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of -15.87%.
  • ASSURANT INC has experienced a steep decline in earnings per share in the most recent quarter in comparison to its performance from the same quarter a year ago. 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, ASSURANT INC increased its bottom line by earning $6.42 versus $6.30 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($7.10 versus $6.42).
  • Regardless of the drop in revenue, the company managed to outperform against the industry average of 15.4%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly dropped by 6.2%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share.
  • 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. The stock's price rise over the last year has driven it to a level which is somewhat expensive compared to the rest of its industry. We feel, however, that other strengths this company displays justify these higher price levels.

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