Investors Buy High Volume of BP Call Options (NYSE:BP)

BP p.l.c. (NYSE:BP) saw unusually large options trading activity on Monday. Traders bought 44,759 call options on the stock. This is an increase of 87% compared to the average daily volume of 23,955 call options.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On BP

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Bank & Trust Co raised its stake in shares of BP by 404.8% in the fourth quarter. Bank & Trust Co now owns 2,120 shares of the oil and gas exploration company’s stock valued at $63,000 after acquiring an additional 1,700 shares during the last quarter. Versant Capital Management Inc raised its position in BP by 41.0% in the 4th quarter. Versant Capital Management Inc now owns 2,221 shares of the oil and gas exploration company’s stock valued at $66,000 after purchasing an additional 646 shares during the last quarter. Strategic Investment Solutions Inc. IL acquired a new position in BP in the second quarter worth $75,000. ORG Partners LLC increased its stake in shares of BP by 32.5% in the third quarter. ORG Partners LLC now owns 2,533 shares of the oil and gas exploration company’s stock valued at $80,000 after buying an additional 621 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Future Financial Wealth Managment LLC bought a new position in shares of BP in the third quarter valued at about $91,000. 11.01% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

BP Stock Up 2.6 %

Shares of BP opened at $31.82 on Wednesday. BP has a 52 week low of $27.82 and a 52 week high of $40.40. The firm has a market capitalization of $85.02 billion, a P/E ratio of 33.50, a P/E/G ratio of 2.13 and a beta of 0.64. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $29.37 and a 200-day simple moving average of $32.04. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.66, a quick ratio of 0.94 and a current ratio of 1.22.

BP (NYSE:BP) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The oil and gas exploration company reported $0.83 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.78 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $47.25 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $52.05 billion. BP had a return on equity of 12.91% and a net margin of 1.36%. BP’s revenue was down 11.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $1.15 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts expect that BP will post 3.55 earnings per share for the current year.

BP Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, December 20th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 8th were paid a dividend of $0.48 per share. This represents a $1.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 6.03%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, November 8th. BP’s dividend payout ratio is 200.00%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have commented on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group raised shares of BP to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, October 11th. BNP Paribas downgraded BP from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 9th. StockNews.com cut BP from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, December 27th. Scotiabank lowered shares of BP from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and dropped their price target for the company from $42.00 to $36.00 in a research report on Thursday, October 10th. Finally, Morgan Stanley decreased their price objective on shares of BP from $34.70 to $31.80 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday. Twelve analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and four have given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $39.89.

BP Company Profile

BP p.l.c. provides carbon products and services. The company operates through Gas & Low Carbon Energy, Oil Production & Operations, and Customers & Products segments. It engages in the production of natural gas, and integrated gas and power; trading of gas; operation of onshore and offshore wind power, as well as hydrogen and carbon capture and storage facilities; trading and marketing of renewable and non-renewable power; and production of crude oil.