Investors Are Bailing Out of LEVI. Here's Why.

By Susan Ramirez • Friday, October 07 16:58 • Permanent Link

One of the standouts of today's aftermarket trading session was Levi Strauss &, which logged a -11.7% drop and underperformed the S&P 500 by -8.9%. The Apparel Manufacturing stock is now trading at $14.07 per share and is -43.67% below its average target price of $24.98. Analysts have set target prices ranging from $19 to $33 dollars per share, and have given the stock an average rating of buy.

For the greater market's outlook on the stock, we can use Levi Strauss &'s short interest as a proxy. The short interest represents the proportion of the float's shares that are tied to short positions, meaning that the investor believes the stock will decline in the future. Here, the stock's short interest is 9.5% which means the outlook is split.

When a stock is sold short, it means an investor has borrowed shares of the stock from their broker, and then sold them at the going market price. The investor hopes for the price to decline, so that they might buy those shares back at a lower price in the future. Once they do, they can return the borrowed shares to their broker, and keep the profit they made on the transaction.

One way to get an idea of the market sentiment on a stock is to check its rate of institutional ownership. In the case of Levi Strauss &, institutional investors own 77.2% of the shares, which indicates they have a very high stake in the company. What does this really tell us?

Institutional investors such as hedge funds, investment firms, and wealth managers devote significant resources to identifying good investments. If they have decided to invest in LEVI, it probably means they believe it is a solid investment choice.

But it could also mean they are buying up shares in an effort to acquire the company or toget seats on the board of directors. Also bear in mind that institutions are fallible (just maybe not quite as fallible as the average retail investor), so they may simply be wrong when they think they've found a good stock.

Overall, there is mostly positive market sentiment towards Levi Strauss & because of its an analyst consensus of strong upside potential, a buy rating, an average amount of shares sold short, and an average number of institutional investors. Investors should not base their decisions on market sentiment only, they should also be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.

At a glance, here are some essential statistics you may want to know about LEVI:

It has a trailing 12 month price to earnings (Eps) of $1.4 per share
Levi Strauss & has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 10.1 while the S&P 500 average is 15.97
The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 3.2 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 2.95
Levi Strauss & is a Consumer Cyclical company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 24.11 and 3.11 respectively

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The above analysis is intended for educational purposes only and was performed on the basis of publicly available data. It is not to be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Any buy, sell, or other recommendations mentioned in the article are direct quotations of consensus recommendations from the analysts covering the stock, and do not represent the opinions of Market Inference or its writers. Past performance, accounting data, and inferences about market position and corporate valuation are not reliable indicators of future price movements. Market Inference does not provide financial advice. Investors should conduct their own review and analysis of any company of interest before making an investment decision.