adobe stock plummets secondworst in decade

#ADOBE STOCK PLUMMETS SECONDWORST IN DECADE FREE#

JPMorgan’s Philip Cusick cut his rating to neutral, after being at overweight for the past two years, and nearly halved his price target to $14 from $27, saying that while fourth-quarter results were “decent,” the dividend cut raises questions about longer-term trends. “We are stepping to the sidelines until we have better visibility on topline improvement.” “We believe the change in policy is a reflection of limited visibility into revenue improvement and ongoing pressures,” Levi wrote in a note to clients.

#ADOBE STOCK PLUMMETS SECONDWORST IN DECADE FREE#

Levi said the previous bullish rating rested on CenturyLink’s ability to stabilize free cash flow and sustain its dividend policy.

UBS analyst Batya Levi downgraded the stock to hold, after being at buy for over three years, and cut the price target to $14 from $24. The lowered dividend will help reduce financial leverage by allowing the company to down debt faster, which in turn will improve its cost of capital, provide additional flexibility to respond to market opportunities and potential interest rate challenges, while still returning a “significant amount of cash” to shareholders, Storey said. “Our board looked at our free cash flow projections and believed that cutting the dividend, investing in the growth of the company, paying down debt and still returning more than $1 billion a year to shareholders was a better path for long-term value creation,” Storey said, according to a transcript provided by FactSet. The dividend cut will reduce the company’s total payout to about $1.07 billion from $2.31 billion, based on the weighted average shares outstanding of 1.07 billion in the fourth quarter.Ĭhief Executive Jeffrey Storey said on the post-earnings conference call that he “didn’t like” the high dividend yield, saying it just wasn’t appropriate. That was more than double the second-highest yielding stock in the S&P 500, which is currently Ford Motor Co.’sĪt the new annual dividend rate, the yield would still be the highest in the S&P 500 at 7.81% at current prices. No less than three analysts followed by downgrading the stock and at least 10 analysts cut their price targets.īased on Wednesday’s stock closing price of $14.70, the previous rate implied a dividend yield of 14.69%.

Adobe stock plummets secondworst in decade