Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) Downgraded to Sell Rating by StockNews.com

StockNews.com cut shares of Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research note released on Thursday.

VECO has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Oppenheimer dropped their price target on Veeco Instruments from $45.00 to $40.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, November 7th. Northland Securities lowered their target price on shares of Veeco Instruments from $53.00 to $47.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, August 7th. Benchmark reduced their price target on shares of Veeco Instruments from $42.00 to $38.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, November 7th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and set a $55.00 price objective on shares of Veeco Instruments in a research report on Wednesday, August 7th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their target price on shares of Veeco Instruments from $35.00 to $30.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, November 7th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $42.14.

Veeco Instruments Stock Up 1.8 %

VECO stock opened at $27.63 on Thursday. The company’s 50 day moving average is $30.07 and its two-hundred day moving average is $36.62. Veeco Instruments has a twelve month low of $25.52 and a twelve month high of $49.25. The company has a current ratio of 3.54, a quick ratio of 2.41 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.33. The stock has a market cap of $1.57 billion, a P/E ratio of 20.47 and a beta of 1.17.

Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 6th. The semiconductor company reported $0.46 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.45 by $0.01. The firm had revenue of $184.80 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $180.57 million. Veeco Instruments had a net margin of 11.34% and a return on equity of 10.92%. Veeco Instruments’s revenue for the quarter was up 4.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.41 EPS. Research analysts expect that Veeco Instruments will post 1.12 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CFO John P. Kiernan sold 2,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, October 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $32.63, for a total transaction of $81,575.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 82,642 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,696,608.46. The trade was a 2.94 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 7,500 shares of company stock worth $225,850. 2.40% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Veeco Instruments

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Wasatch Advisors LP increased its stake in Veeco Instruments by 50.3% in the 3rd quarter. Wasatch Advisors LP now owns 2,640,649 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $87,485,000 after purchasing an additional 883,815 shares in the last quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company increased its position in shares of Veeco Instruments by 20.1% in the third quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 2,216,351 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $73,428,000 after buying an additional 371,221 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp increased its position in shares of Veeco Instruments by 1.5% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,091,995 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $69,308,000 after buying an additional 30,008 shares in the last quarter. Driehaus Capital Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Veeco Instruments by 119.3% during the 2nd quarter. Driehaus Capital Management LLC now owns 1,458,288 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock worth $68,117,000 after buying an additional 793,429 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in Veeco Instruments by 1.7% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,337,321 shares of the semiconductor company’s stock valued at $44,314,000 after acquiring an additional 22,850 shares during the last quarter. 98.46% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Veeco Instruments Company Profile

Veeco Instruments Inc, together with its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures, sells, and supports semiconductor and thin film process equipment primarily to make electronic devices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, China, Rest of the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company offers laser annealing, ion beam deposition and etch, metal organic chemical vapor deposition, single wafer wet processing and surface preparation, molecular beam epitaxy, advanced packaging lithography, atomic layer deposition, and other deposition systems.