Short Interest in Criteo S.A. (NASDAQ:CRTO) Drops By 5.7%

Criteo S.A. (NASDAQ:CRTO) was the recipient of a large decline in short interest in August. As of August 31st, there was short interest totalling 2,150,000 shares, a decline of 5.7% from the August 15th total of 2,280,000 shares. Approximately 4.1% of the company’s shares are short sold. Based on an average daily volume of 468,400 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 4.6 days.

Insider Activity

In other Criteo news, CFO Sarah Js Glickman sold 5,496 shares of Criteo stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, July 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $45.49, for a total transaction of $250,013.04. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 320,201 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,565,943.49. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Insiders own 1.71% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Cadian Capital Management LP raised its stake in Criteo by 70.4% during the 4th quarter. Cadian Capital Management LP now owns 4,239,314 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $107,339,000 after acquiring an additional 1,751,511 shares during the period. Acadian Asset Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Criteo by 0.3% in the first quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC now owns 2,195,542 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $76,972,000 after purchasing an additional 6,698 shares in the last quarter. Lord Abbett & CO. LLC increased its stake in shares of Criteo by 3.5% in the first quarter. Lord Abbett & CO. LLC now owns 1,100,902 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $38,608,000 after purchasing an additional 37,364 shares in the last quarter. Orchard Capital Management LLC raised its position in shares of Criteo by 3.2% during the 4th quarter. Orchard Capital Management LLC now owns 453,896 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $11,493,000 after purchasing an additional 14,281 shares during the period. Finally, APG Asset Management N.V. lifted its stake in shares of Criteo by 1.9% during the 2nd quarter. APG Asset Management N.V. now owns 407,822 shares of the information services provider’s stock valued at $14,353,000 after buying an additional 7,469 shares in the last quarter. 94.27% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Criteo Price Performance

Shares of Criteo stock opened at $42.35 on Thursday. Criteo has a 1-year low of $22.10 and a 1-year high of $49.93. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $45.10 and its 200-day simple moving average is $39.44. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.40 billion, a PE ratio of 43.66 and a beta of 0.99.

Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) last released its earnings results on Thursday, August 1st. The information services provider reported $1.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.77 by $0.31. The company had revenue of $471.31 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $263.64 million. Criteo had a return on equity of 15.64% and a net margin of 4.54%. Criteo’s quarterly revenue was up .5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.12 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts anticipate that Criteo will post 2.8 EPS for the current year.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

CRTO has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Susquehanna lifted their price target on shares of Criteo from $40.00 to $50.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, August 2nd. StockNews.com lowered Criteo from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 21st. Benchmark raised their price objective on shares of Criteo from $45.00 to $56.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, August 2nd. DA Davidson upgraded shares of Criteo from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their target price for the stock from $43.00 to $58.00 in a research note on Tuesday, August 6th. Finally, Macquarie increased their price target on shares of Criteo from $45.00 to $65.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday, August 2nd. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $50.11.

About Criteo

Criteo SA, a technology company, provides marketing and monetization services on the open Internet in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. The company's Criteo Shopper Graph, which derives clients' proprietary commerce data, such as transaction activity on their digital properties.