Tumbling to a price of $19.03 during today's morning trading session, shares of Host Hotels & Resorts are now -17.55% below their average target price of $23.08. Does this mean the stock will reverse course? Analysts are giving HST an average rating of buy and target prices ranging from 19.0 to 25.0 dollars per share.
For the greater market's outlook on the stock, we can use Host Hotels & Resorts'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 9.2% which means the outlook is split.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and then selling them at current market prices. In the successful version of the strategy, the shares are purchased at a lower price at some time in the future. The investor then returns the shares to the lender, and keeps the profit made on the sell/buy transaction.
Another way to gauge the sentiment on Host Hotels & Resorts is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 104.3% 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.
To sum up, Host Hotels & Resorts is probably the subject of positive market sentiment because of an analyst consensus of some upside potential, a buy rating, an above average percentage of its shares sold short, 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 HST:
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The stock has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $1.04
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Host Hotels & Resorts has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 18.3 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 2.02 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 2.95
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Host Hotels & Resorts is a Real Estate company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 25.55 and 2.1 respectively
