Volatility Is Your Friend: Principal Financial Group Inc (PFG) Is Hot Again

Principal Financial Group Inc (NASDAQ:PFG) does about 1.15M shares in volume on a normal day but saw 1333193 shares change hands in the recent trading day. The company now has a market cap of 17.42B USD. Its current market price is $75.23, marking an increase of 1.13% compared to the previous close of $74.39. The 52 week high reached by this stock is $88.26 whilst the lowest price level in 52 weeks is $66.21. The script in recent trading has seen the stock touch a high of $87 and a low of $64.

Principal Financial Group Inc (PFG) has a 20-day trading average at $79.77 and the current price is -14.76% off the 52-week high compared with 13.62% distance from its 52-week low. The 50-day simple moving average of the closing price is $79.92 and its 200-day simple moving average is $79.09. If we look at the stock’s price movements over the week, volatility stands at 1.74%, which increases to 2.15% 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 37.25 to suggest the stock is neutral.

The consensus objective for the share price is $85.85, suggesting that the stock has a potential upside of 12.37% over the period. The median price target is 4.77% away from the current levels at $79.

0 analysts have rated it as a buy and 2 have advised that investors hold their positions. The consensus recommendation rating is Hold and Wall Street’s advice is for investors to Hold the stock.

The company shares received a number of brokerage firm price updates over the past month, with the latest being on July 09, 2024 when Raymond James upgraded the stock to “Strong Buy” and issued a price target of $99. JP Morgan also upgraded the stock to “Neutral” from Underweight on July 02, 2024 at a price target of $88-$96. Morgan Stanley upgraded its price target at $75.

Principal Financial Group Inc (PFG) stock is up 2.54% over the week and -12.60% over the past month. Its price is -4.37% year-to-date and -3.51% over the past year.

Its 12-month price target is $79. To reach the target analysts have set, the stock logically needs to grow 12.37 percent from here. Of course, the average price target is just what the average analysts believe a stock will be worth in the next 52 weeks, and is only one metric. There are analysts with lower targets than the average, including one bearish Wall Street research firm advocating investors to wait for the price to pull back to $64, given the recent momentum. And then, on the bullish side of things, one analyst is expecting the stock to peak at $87.

The company has a return on investment of 8.43% and return on equity of 11.80%. The price to earnings ratio (P/E ratio) amounts to 14.66 while the forward price to earnings ratio is 8.97. The beta has a value of 1.21. Price to book ratio is 1.59 and price to sales ratio is 1.11.