Arizona State Retirement System Has $1.63 Million Stock Position in SouthState Co. (NASDAQ:SSB)

Arizona State Retirement System lifted its stake in shares of SouthState Co. (NASDAQ:SSB) by 2.1% during the second quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 21,347 shares of the bank’s stock after acquiring an additional 443 shares during the quarter. Arizona State Retirement System’s holdings in SouthState were worth $1,631,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in SSB. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in SouthState by 0.6% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 8,448,323 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $713,461,000 after buying an additional 54,147 shares during the period. Victory Capital Management Inc. raised its stake in SouthState by 1.6% in the 2nd quarter. Victory Capital Management Inc. now owns 2,802,373 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $214,157,000 after acquiring an additional 45,176 shares during the period. Franklin Resources Inc. raised its stake in SouthState by 26.8% in the 4th quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 2,208,224 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $186,485,000 after acquiring an additional 466,144 shares during the period. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC lifted its holdings in SouthState by 1.9% during the 2nd quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 1,144,513 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $87,464,000 after purchasing an additional 21,160 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank bought a new position in SouthState during the fourth quarter worth $75,485,000. 89.76% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts have recently weighed in on SSB shares. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods increased their price objective on shares of SouthState from $95.00 to $110.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Monday, July 29th. DA Davidson raised their price objective on shares of SouthState from $102.00 to $112.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, July 26th. Stephens upped their target price on SouthState from $88.00 to $101.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Monday, July 29th. Piper Sandler lifted their price target on SouthState from $95.00 to $98.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 29th. Finally, Hovde Group boosted their price target on SouthState from $97.00 to $112.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, July 29th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, SouthState has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $102.75.

SouthState Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ SSB opened at $92.05 on Thursday. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $90.39 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $82.86. The stock has a market capitalization of $7.01 billion, a PE ratio of 15.00 and a beta of 0.67. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.10, a current ratio of 0.91 and a quick ratio of 0.91. SouthState Co. has a fifty-two week low of $63.36 and a fifty-two week high of $101.32.

SouthState (NASDAQ:SSB) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 24th. The bank reported $1.79 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.54 by $0.25. SouthState had a return on equity of 9.31% and a net margin of 20.84%. The business had revenue of $425.48 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $418.08 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $1.63 earnings per share. SouthState’s revenue for the quarter was down 3.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts predict that SouthState Co. will post 6.7 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

SouthState Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, August 16th. Stockholders of record on Friday, August 9th were issued a dividend of $0.54 per share. This represents a $2.16 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.35%. The ex-dividend date was Friday, August 9th. This is an increase from SouthState’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.23. SouthState’s dividend payout ratio is 35.24%.

SouthState Profile

SouthState Corporation operates as the bank holding company for SouthState Bank, National Association that provides a range of banking services and products to individuals and companies. It offers checking accounts, savings deposits, interest-bearing transaction accounts, certificates of deposits, money market accounts, and other time deposits, as well as bond accounting, asset/liability consulting related activities, and other clearing and corporate checking account services.