State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D Increases Stake in ePlus inc. (NASDAQ:PLUS)

State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D increased its position in shares of ePlus inc. (NASDAQ:PLUS) by 6.3% during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 39,710 shares of the software maker’s stock after buying an additional 2,348 shares during the period. State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D owned about 0.15% of ePlus worth $3,170,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Exchange Traded Concepts LLC purchased a new position in ePlus in the third quarter valued at about $27,000. Operose Advisors LLC purchased a new position in ePlus in the third quarter valued at about $33,000. DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale purchased a new position in ePlus in the third quarter valued at about $98,000. Cornerstone Investment Partners LLC purchased a new position in ePlus in the fourth quarter valued at about $202,000. Finally, Caprock Group LLC purchased a new position in ePlus in the fourth quarter valued at about $219,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 93.80% of the company’s stock.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other ePlus news, Director John E. Callies sold 1,308 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $79.17, for a total value of $103,554.36. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 20,493 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,622,430.81. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Corporate insiders own 2.41% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have issued reports on PLUS shares. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their target price on ePlus from $70.00 to $80.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, April 15th. Sidoti lowered ePlus from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $83.00 target price on the stock. in a research note on Monday, January 8th.

ePlus Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ PLUS opened at $78.19 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.01, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a current ratio of 1.93. The company has a market cap of $2.11 billion, a PE ratio of 16.50 and a beta of 1.18. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $78.41 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $73.47. ePlus inc. has a fifty-two week low of $41.71 and a fifty-two week high of $83.57.

ePlus (NASDAQ:PLUS) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, February 6th. The software maker reported $1.02 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $1.24 by ($0.22). The business had revenue of $509.06 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $598.25 million. ePlus had a return on equity of 15.26% and a net margin of 5.86%. As a group, equities analysts expect that ePlus inc. will post 4.59 EPS for the current fiscal year.

ePlus Profile

ePlus inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides information technology (IT) solutions that enable organizations to optimize their IT environment and supply chain processes in the United States and internationally. It operates in two segments, Technology and Financing. The Technology segment offers hardware, perpetual and subscription software, maintenance, software assurance, and internally provided and outsourced services; and professional and managed services, including managed, professional, security solutions, cloud consulting and hosting, staff augmentation, storage-as-a-service, server and desktop support, and project management services.