Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT): The Latest Casualty Of Increased Volatility?

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) does about 6.30M shares in volume on a normal day but saw 5854777 shares change hands in Friday trading. The company now has a market cap of 172.71B USD. Its current market price is $207.86, marking a decrease of -2.40% compared to the previous close of $212.98. The 52 week high reached by this stock is $214.91 whilst the lowest price level in 52 weeks is $109.00.

Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) has a 20-day trading average at $206.96 and the current price is -3.28% off the 52-week high compared with 90.70% distance from its 52-week low. The 50-day simple moving average of the closing price is $198.62 and its 200-day simple moving average is $159.99. If we look at the stock’s price movements over the week, volatility stands at 2.01%, which increases to 2.34% over 1 month. It is also key to look at other market indicators of price movement for the stock, where we see that the relative strength index (RSI) is at 53.84 to suggest the stock is neutral.

The consensus objective for the share price is $222.40, suggesting that the stock has a potential upside of 6.54% over the period.

The company shares received a number of brokerage firm price updates over the past month, with the latest being on April 11, 2024 when Deutsche Bank resumed the stock to “Hold” and issued a price target of $225. Cantor Fitzgerald upgraded the stock to “Overweight” from Neutral on April 08, 2024 at a price target of $260. TD Cowen reiterated its price target at $185-$245.

Its price is 28.25% year-to-date and 83.69% over the past year.

The stock last released its quarterly earnings report for quarter ended 1/31/2024, with the company’s earnings per share (EPS) of $2.13 above consensus estimates by $0.22. AMAT’s earnings per share are forecast to grow by 2.70% this year and 15.50% over next year. Expected sales for next quarter are $6.57 billion, which analysts say will come at $26.75 billion for the current fiscal year and next year at $29.7 billion. In addition, estimates put the company’s current quarterly revenue at an average of $6.54 billion.

To reach the target analysts have set, the stock logically needs to grow 6.54 percent from here.

The company has a return on investment of 30.95% and return on equity of 46.41%. The price to earnings ratio (P/E ratio) amounts to 24.45 while the forward price to earnings ratio is 21.76. The beta has a value of 1.58. Price to book ratio is 9.91 and price to sales ratio is 6.53.