Principal Financial Group Inc. Sells 251,960 Shares of Amdocs Limited (NASDAQ:DOX)

Principal Financial Group Inc. reduced its stake in Amdocs Limited (NASDAQ:DOX) by 24.4% in the 4th quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 780,907 shares of the technology company’s stock after selling 251,960 shares during the quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc.’s holdings in Amdocs were worth $66,488,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. First Horizon Advisors Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Amdocs by 1.9% in the 3rd quarter. First Horizon Advisors Inc. now owns 5,902 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $516,000 after purchasing an additional 109 shares in the last quarter. Private Trust Co. NA raised its holdings in Amdocs by 62.9% during the third quarter. Private Trust Co. NA now owns 303 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $27,000 after buying an additional 117 shares during the last quarter. Principal Securities Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Amdocs by 10.4% in the fourth quarter. Principal Securities Inc. now owns 1,341 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $114,000 after buying an additional 126 shares in the last quarter. Morton Community Bank grew its holdings in shares of Amdocs by 0.4% during the third quarter. Morton Community Bank now owns 36,410 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $3,185,000 after buying an additional 130 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Private Advisor Group LLC increased its position in shares of Amdocs by 3.2% during the third quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC now owns 5,626 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $492,000 after acquiring an additional 175 shares in the last quarter. 92.02% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several analysts have recently commented on the company. Oppenheimer increased their price objective on Amdocs from $98.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 13th. StockNews.com cut Amdocs from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Finally, Barclays lowered their target price on shares of Amdocs from $113.00 to $111.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, November 14th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Amdocs has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $101.20.

Amdocs Stock Performance

Shares of Amdocs stock opened at $89.60 on Thursday. The firm has a market capitalization of $10.11 billion, a P/E ratio of 20.79, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.45 and a beta of 0.71. The company has a current ratio of 1.16, a quick ratio of 1.20 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $86.04 and its 200 day simple moving average is $86.54. Amdocs Limited has a 12 month low of $74.41 and a 12 month high of $94.04.

Amdocs (NASDAQ:DOX) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, February 4th. The technology company reported $1.45 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.64 by ($0.19). Amdocs had a return on equity of 18.89% and a net margin of 10.19%. As a group, analysts anticipate that Amdocs Limited will post 6.21 EPS for the current year.

Amdocs Increases Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Sunday, April 20th. Shareholders of record on Monday, March 31st will be issued a dividend of $0.527 per share. The ex-dividend date is Monday, March 31st. This is an increase from Amdocs’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.48. This represents a $2.11 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.35%. Amdocs’s dividend payout ratio is 44.55%.

About Amdocs

Amdocs Limited, through its subsidiaries, provides software and services worldwide. It designs, develops, operates, implements, supports, and markets open and modular cloud portfolio. The company provides CES23, a 5G and cloud-native microservices-based market-leading customer experience suite, that enables service providers to build, deliver, and monetize advanced services; Amdocs Subscription Marketplace, a software-as-a-service-based platform that includes an expansive network of pre-integrated digital services, such as media, gaming, eLearning, sports, and retail to security and business services; the monetization suite for charging, billing, policy, and revenue management; Intelligent networking suite with a set of modular, flexible, and open service lifecycle management capabilities for network automation journeys; amAIz, a telco GenAI framework; Amdocs Digital Brands Suite, a pre-integrated digital business suite; and Amdocs eSIM Cloud for service providers.