Principal Financial Group Inc. Makes New Investment in SolarWinds Co. (NYSE:SWI)

Principal Financial Group Inc. bought a new stake in SolarWinds Co. (NYSE:SWI) during the 3rd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The fund bought 281,427 shares of the software maker’s stock, valued at approximately $3,673,000.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in SWI. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its position in SolarWinds by 8.7% in the second quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 5,776,309 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $69,603,000 after purchasing an additional 461,061 shares during the period. 272 Capital LP purchased a new stake in shares of SolarWinds in the second quarter valued at approximately $5,032,000. AQR Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in SolarWinds by 48.5% during the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 825,829 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $9,869,000 after acquiring an additional 269,578 shares during the period. Mcmorgan & Co. LLC acquired a new stake in SolarWinds in the second quarter valued at $2,618,000. Finally, Dark Forest Capital Management LP purchased a new stake in shares of SolarWinds during the 2nd quarter worth $1,167,000. 93.96% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Insider Transactions at SolarWinds

In related news, CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna sold 200,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $13.68, for a total transaction of $2,736,000.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 2,212,171 shares in the company, valued at approximately $30,262,499.28. This trade represents a 8.29 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, insider Jason Bliss sold 135,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $13.02, for a total value of $1,757,700.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 838,789 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $10,921,032.78. This represents a 13.86 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 351,000 shares of company stock valued at $4,703,780 over the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 1.95% of the company’s stock.

SolarWinds Price Performance

Shares of SolarWinds stock opened at $13.05 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.23 billion, a P/E ratio of 59.32 and a beta of 0.96. The company has a current ratio of 0.71, a quick ratio of 0.71 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.88. The business’s fifty day moving average price is $12.96 and its 200 day moving average price is $12.34. SolarWinds Co. has a twelve month low of $10.14 and a twelve month high of $14.02.

SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, October 31st. The software maker reported $0.27 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.25 by $0.02. SolarWinds had a net margin of 4.93% and a return on equity of 7.96%. The firm had revenue of $200.03 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $194.03 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.11 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 5.5% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts anticipate that SolarWinds Co. will post 0.74 earnings per share for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts recently commented on SWI shares. Scotiabank assumed coverage on shares of SolarWinds in a research note on Friday, September 13th. They issued a “sector perform” rating and a $13.00 price objective for the company. Robert W. Baird increased their price objective on SolarWinds from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 1st. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $14.00.

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds Corporation provides information technology (IT) management software products in the United States and internationally. It provides a suite of network management software that offers real-time visibility into network utilization and bandwidth, as well as the ability to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance problems; and a suite of infrastructure management products, which monitors and analyzes the performance of applications and their supporting infrastructure, including servers, physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure, storage, and databases.