COP Stock Rises, Still Far from 52-Week Peak

By Ken Smith • Monday, March 31 15:07 • Permanent Link

Rocketing to a price of $104.89 during today's afternoon trading session, shares of ConocoPhillips are still -18.41% below their average target price of $128.56. Could there be more upside potential for the stock? Analysts are giving COP an average rating of buy and target prices ranging from $114.0 to $165.0 dollars per share.

The market seems to share this rosy outlook, since ConocoPhillips has a short interest of only 1.2%. This represents the percentage of the share float that is being shorted, and each short position stands for an investor's expectation that the price of the stock will go down 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 ConocoPhillips is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 83.3% 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.

In conclusion, we see mixed market sentiment regarding ConocoPhillips because of an analyst consensus of some upside potential, a buy 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 COP:

The stock has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $7.81
ConocoPhillips has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 13.4 compared to the S&P 500 average of 29.3
The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 2.07 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 4.74
ConocoPhillips is a Energy company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 13.62 and 1.86 respectively

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.