Monster Beverage Corp (MNST) Receives $62.21 Average Price Target from Analysts

Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST) has been assigned a consensus recommendation of “Buy” from the eighteen analysts that are currently covering the company, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating, ten have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. The average 12 month price objective among brokerages that have covered the stock in the last year is $62.21.

A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on MNST shares. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their price objective on shares of Monster Beverage from $65.00 to $66.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 18th. BidaskClub lowered shares of Monster Beverage from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, October 5th. Zacks Investment Research lowered shares of Monster Beverage from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, October 15th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their target price on shares of Monster Beverage from $64.00 to $58.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 24th. Finally, Morgan Stanley downgraded shares of Monster Beverage from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and raised their target price for the company from $50.02 to $57.00 in a research report on Thursday, November 8th.

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In other Monster Beverage news, EVP Thomas J. Kelly sold 14,661 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, December 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $53.73, for a total transaction of $787,735.53. Following the sale, the executive vice president now owns 24,312 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,306,283.76. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director Harold C. Taber, Jr. sold 9,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, December 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $54.55, for a total transaction of $490,950.00. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 77,238 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,213,332.90. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 9.70% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. BlackRock Inc. increased its holdings in Monster Beverage by 1.2% in the 3rd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 24,111,145 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,405,199,000 after acquiring an additional 279,364 shares in the last quarter. Loomis Sayles & Co. L P increased its holdings in Monster Beverage by 1.5% in the 3rd quarter. Loomis Sayles & Co. L P now owns 24,002,010 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,398,837,000 after acquiring an additional 347,332 shares in the last quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. increased its holdings in Monster Beverage by 47.2% in the 3rd quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 12,359,240 shares of the company’s stock worth $720,297,000 after acquiring an additional 3,961,104 shares in the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp increased its holdings in Monster Beverage by 2.5% in the 2nd quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 4,991,954 shares of the company’s stock worth $286,039,000 after acquiring an additional 121,766 shares in the last quarter. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its holdings in Monster Beverage by 1.9% in the 3rd quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 3,190,474 shares of the company’s stock worth $185,941,000 after acquiring an additional 59,507 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 64.15% of the company’s stock.

Monster Beverage stock opened at $54.37 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $29.49 billion, a PE ratio of 37.24, a PEG ratio of 1.67 and a beta of 1.45. Monster Beverage has a 12-month low of $47.61 and a 12-month high of $70.21.

Monster Beverage (NASDAQ:MNST) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 7th. The company reported $0.50 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.46 by $0.04. Monster Beverage had a net margin of 25.86% and a return on equity of 25.47%. The company had revenue of $1.02 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $988.73 million. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.40 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts expect that Monster Beverage will post 1.77 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Monster Beverage Company Profile

Monster Beverage Corporation, through its subsidiaries, develops, markets, sells, and distributes energy drink beverages, soda, and its concentrates in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: Monster Energy Drinks, Strategic Brands, and Other. The company offers ready-to-drink packaged drinks, non-carbonated dairy based coffee and energy drinks, and non-carbonated energy shakes primarily to bottlers and full service beverage distributors, as well as sells directly to retail grocery and specialty chains, wholesalers, club stores, drug stores, mass merchandisers, convenience chains, food service customers, and the military; and concentrates and/or beverage bases to authorized bottling and canning operations; and ready-to-drink packaged energy drinks to bottlers and full service beverage distributors.

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