Brokerages Anticipate Absolute Software Co. (NASDAQ:ABST) to Post -$0.07 EPS

Equities research analysts expect Absolute Software Co. (NASDAQ:ABST – Get Rating) to announce earnings of ($0.07) per share for the current quarter, according to Zacks. Two analysts have issued estimates for Absolute Software’s earnings. Absolute Software posted earnings per share of $0.04 in the same quarter last year, which suggests a negative year over year growth rate of 275%. The company is scheduled to report its next earnings report after the market closes on Monday, January 1st.

According to Zacks, analysts expect that Absolute Software will report full year earnings of ($0.20) per share for the current year. For the next financial year, analysts expect that the company will report earnings of ($0.07) per share. Zacks’ earnings per share calculations are a mean average based on a survey of sell-side analysts that follow Absolute Software.

Absolute Software (NASDAQ:ABST – Get Rating) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, February 8th. The company reported $0.13 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the Zacks’ consensus estimate of ($0.06) by $0.19. The company had revenue of $49.05 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $50.15 million.

ABST has been the subject of several research reports. Zacks Investment Research raised shares of Absolute Software from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, January 11th. Raymond James decreased their target price on shares of Absolute Software from $19.00 to $16.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, February 9th. TD Securities raised shares of Absolute Software from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the company from $11.00 to $13.00 in a research report on Wednesday, February 9th. Finally, TheStreet downgraded shares of Absolute Software from a “c-” rating to a “d+” rating in a research report on Wednesday, February 9th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Absolute Software currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $17.92.

NASDAQ:ABST opened at $7.90 on Wednesday. The company has a market cap of $400.77 million, a PE ratio of -29.26 and a beta of 0.91. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $8.53 and a 200 day simple moving average of $9.13. Absolute Software has a 52-week low of $7.22 and a 52-week high of $15.67.

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 25th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, May 12th will be paid a $0.064 dividend. This represents a $0.26 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.24%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, May 11th. Absolute Software’s dividend payout ratio is currently -92.59%.

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in ABST. Citadel Advisors LLC lifted its stake in Absolute Software by 82.9% in the second quarter. Citadel Advisors LLC now owns 38,483 shares of the company’s stock valued at $557,000 after acquiring an additional 17,446 shares during the last quarter. Millennium Management LLC acquired a new stake in Absolute Software in the second quarter valued at $188,000. Morgan Stanley lifted its stake in Absolute Software by 28.9% in the second quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 909,912 shares of the company’s stock valued at $13,176,000 after acquiring an additional 203,945 shares during the last quarter. Raymond James & Associates acquired a new stake in Absolute Software in the third quarter valued at $144,000. Finally, NewGen Asset Management Ltd acquired a new stake in shares of Absolute Software during the 3rd quarter worth about $9,067,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 63.89% of the company’s stock.

About Absolute Software (Get Rating)

Absolute Software Corporation develops, markets, and provides cloud-based endpoint visibility and control platform for the management and security of computing devices, applications, and data for enterprise and public sector organizations. The company offers the Absolute platform to provide the connectivity, visibility, and control of data and devices of the operating system; to recover automatically to a secure operational state without user intervention; to support various other security controls and productivity tools from decay and vulnerabilities; and to enable measurement of the health, compliance, and state of decay of endpoint security controls and productivity tools self-healing if the application becomes uninstalled or broken.

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