Harbor Capital Advisors Inc. Boosts Stock Position in Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS)

Harbor Capital Advisors Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) by 1.8% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 5,560 shares of the technology company’s stock after buying an additional 96 shares during the period. Harbor Capital Advisors Inc.’s holdings in Littelfuse were worth $1,310,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in LFUS. Private Advisor Group LLC increased its holdings in shares of Littelfuse by 377.1% during the second quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC now owns 4,571 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $1,168,000 after acquiring an additional 3,613 shares in the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. grew its position in Littelfuse by 43.5% during the 2nd quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 161,319 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $41,232,000 after purchasing an additional 48,890 shares during the last quarter. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. increased its stake in Littelfuse by 16.9% during the 2nd quarter. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. now owns 6,028 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $1,541,000 after purchasing an additional 870 shares in the last quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. raised its holdings in Littelfuse by 10.5% in the second quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. now owns 6,275 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $1,604,000 after buying an additional 596 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Envestnet Asset Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Littelfuse by 1.2% in the second quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 127,058 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $32,475,000 after buying an additional 1,466 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 96.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently weighed in on LFUS shares. Oppenheimer raised shares of Littelfuse from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $310.00 price target for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 17th. StockNews.com upgraded Littelfuse from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, October 18th. Finally, Benchmark reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of Littelfuse in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, four have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $285.00.

Littelfuse Price Performance

NASDAQ LFUS opened at $235.12 on Monday. The stock has a market capitalization of $5.83 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.22, a PEG ratio of 2.42 and a beta of 1.26. Littelfuse, Inc. has a 1-year low of $222.91 and a 1-year high of $275.58. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.31, a current ratio of 3.55 and a quick ratio of 2.52. The business’s fifty day moving average price is $244.01 and its 200-day moving average price is $252.60.

Littelfuse (NASDAQ:LFUS) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The technology company reported $2.71 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.09 by $0.62. Littelfuse had a return on equity of 8.49% and a net margin of 8.88%. The business had revenue of $567.39 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $557.38 million. During the same period last year, the firm posted $2.97 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was down 6.5% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities analysts predict that Littelfuse, Inc. will post 8.47 earnings per share for the current year.

Littelfuse Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, December 5th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 21st were issued a dividend of $0.70 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, November 21st. This represents a $2.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.19%. Littelfuse’s dividend payout ratio is currently 35.99%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CAO Jeffrey G. Gorski sold 700 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, December 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $249.02, for a total value of $174,314.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 3,105 shares in the company, valued at $773,207.10. This represents a 18.40 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link. Insiders own 2.30% of the company’s stock.

About Littelfuse

Littelfuse, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells electronic components, modules, and subassemblies in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The company operates through Electronic, Transportation, and Industrial segments. The Electronics segment offers fuses and fuse accessories, positive temperature coefficient resettable fuses, electromechanical switches and interconnect solutions, polymer electrostatic discharge suppressors, varistors, reed switch based magnetic sensing products, and gas discharge tubes; and discrete transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diodes, TVS diode arrays, protection and switching thyristors, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and diodes, and insulated gate bipolar transistors.