Heavy Early Morning Activity On Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF)
Trade-Ideas LLC identified
(
) as a pre-market mover with heavy volume candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Cliffs Natural Resources as such a stock due to the following factors:
- CLF has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $34.2 million.
- CLF traded 977,638 shares today in the pre-market hours as of 8:35 AM, representing 10.8% of its average daily volume.
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More details on CLF:
Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., a mining and natural resources company, produces and supplies iron ore. The company operates five iron ore mines in Michigan and Minnesota; and Koolyanobbing iron ore mining complex located in Western Australia, which produces lump and fines iron ore. CLF has a PE ratio of 14. Currently there are no analysts that rate Cliffs Natural Resources a buy, 2 analysts rate it a sell, and 7 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Cliffs Natural Resources has been 10.4 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Cliffs Natural has a market cap of $600.3 million and is part of the basic materials sector and metals & mining industry. The stock has a beta of 1.25 and a short float of 35.8% with 6.66 days to cover. Shares are up 110.1% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Thursday.
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Analysis:
rates Cliffs Natural Resources as a
. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its feeble growth in its earnings per share, poor profit margins and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.
Highlights from the ratings report include:
- CLIFFS NATURAL RESOURCES INC's earnings per share declined by 37.1% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. Earnings per share have declined over the last year. We anticipate that this should continue in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, CLIFFS NATURAL RESOURCES INC reported lower earnings of $0.64 versus $1.65 in the prior year. For the next year, the market is expecting a contraction of 7.8% in earnings ($0.59 versus $0.64).
- The gross profit margin for CLIFFS NATURAL RESOURCES INC is rather low; currently it is at 21.64%. It has decreased from the same quarter the previous year.
- Despite any intermediate fluctuations, we have only bad news to report on this stock's performance over the last year: it has tumbled by 34.91%, worse than the S&P 500's performance. Consistent with the plunge in the stock price, the company's earnings per share are down 37.11% compared to the year-earlier quarter. Naturally, the overall market trend is bound to be a significant factor. However, in one sense, the stock's sharp decline last year is a positive for future investors, making it cheaper (in proportion to its earnings over the past year) than most other stocks in its industry. But due to other concerns, we feel the stock is still not a good buy right now.
- Despite the weak revenue results, CLF has outperformed against the industry average of 44.9%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues fell by 31.9%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share.
- The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has significantly exceeded that of the S&P 500 and the Metals & Mining industry. The net income increased by 114.2% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from -$759.80 million to $108.00 million.
- You can view the full Cliffs Natural Resources Ratings Report.
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