Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc. Trims Stock Position in MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX)

Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc. lowered its stake in shares of MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) by 6.4% in the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 1,475 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after selling 101 shares during the period. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc.’s holdings in MarketAxess were worth $334,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. Van ECK Associates Corp increased its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 13.4% in the 4th quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 2,000,736 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $452,246,000 after purchasing an additional 236,497 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 17.5% in the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 1,959,043 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $501,907,000 after purchasing an additional 291,134 shares in the last quarter. Primecap Management Co. CA increased its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 2.3% in the 4th quarter. Primecap Management Co. CA now owns 1,369,102 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $309,472,000 after purchasing an additional 30,180 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 14.9% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,076,877 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $275,122,000 after purchasing an additional 139,949 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Bank of New York Mellon Corp increased its stake in shares of MarketAxess by 2.6% in the 4th quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 440,934 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $99,669,000 after purchasing an additional 11,291 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 99.01% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

MKTX has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. Barclays cut their price target on MarketAxess from $256.00 to $225.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, February 7th. Piper Sandler cut their price target on MarketAxess from $265.00 to $240.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, January 7th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods cut their price objective on MarketAxess from $251.00 to $225.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, February 7th. UBS Group cut their price objective on MarketAxess from $330.00 to $305.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, February 7th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group cut their price objective on MarketAxess from $235.00 to $210.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, February 10th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, MarketAxess currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $254.78.

MarketAxess Price Performance

Shares of MarketAxess stock opened at $217.33 on Tuesday. The stock has a market cap of $8.19 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.89, a P/E/G ratio of 3.89 and a beta of 1.05. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $208.03 and its 200-day simple moving average is $241.12. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. has a 1-year low of $186.84 and a 1-year high of $296.68.

MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, February 6th. The financial services provider reported $1.73 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.70 by $0.03. MarketAxess had a return on equity of 20.23% and a net margin of 33.56%. As a group, research analysts expect that MarketAxess Holdings Inc. will post 7.79 EPS for the current fiscal year.

MarketAxess Increases Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, March 5th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, February 19th were issued a dividend of $0.76 per share. This is a boost from MarketAxess’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.74. This represents a $3.04 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.40%. The ex-dividend date was Wednesday, February 19th. MarketAxess’s payout ratio is currently 41.82%.

MarketAxess Profile

MarketAxess Holdings Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates an electronic trading platform for institutional investor and broker-dealer companies worldwide. The company offers trading technology that provides liquidity access in U.S. high-grade bonds, U.S. high-yield bonds, emerging market debt, eurobonds, municipal bonds, U.S.