Despite today's 1.1% jump to $185.17, Ecolab may soon be running into resistance as it is now within range of its average analyst target price of $185.95. With an average rating of hold, and analysts assigning target prices from 165.0 to 213.0 dollars per share, investors will be asking themselves if the Household & Personal Products stock can sustain this bullish run.
The market sentiment on the stock is decidedly optimistic, since Ecolab has a short interest of only 0.9%. This is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted. Each short position represents an investor's expectation that the price of the stock will decrease in the future.
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.
Another way to gauge the sentiment on Ecolab is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 90.5% of the shares are held by pension, mutual, and hedge funds, which shows that these institutions probably have strong confidence in the stock.
If institutions are invested in a particular stock, it shows in most cases that they have performed quality research and concluded that it is a good investment. In some cases, however, increases in institutional ownership could be a sign of a takeover attempt or proxy fight, which can actually injure share prices. Also, institutions are not infallible, and can certainly make miscalculations -- often with spectacular results.
In conclusion, we see mixed market sentiment regarding Ecolab because of an analyst consensus of some upside potential, a hold rating, a very low short interest, and a significant number of institutional investors. At Market Inference, we believe that any investment decision should be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the company's fundamental values and a comparison with similar stocks.
Here's a snapshot of some important facts to keep in mind about ECL:
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The stock has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $4.02
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Ecolab has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 46.1 compared to the S&P 500 average of 15.97
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The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 7.18 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 2.95
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Ecolab is a Consumer Discretionary company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 22.33 and 3.12 respectively
