Insider Buying: Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) Director Purchases 4,000 Shares of Stock

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) Director John T. Baldwin purchased 4,000 shares of Cleveland-Cliffs stock in a transaction dated Monday, March 10th. The stock was bought at an average price of $8.70 per share, for a total transaction of $34,800.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 133,227 shares in the company, valued at $1,159,074.90. The trade was a 3.10 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website.

Cleveland-Cliffs Stock Performance

Shares of Cleveland-Cliffs stock opened at $8.71 on Tuesday. The firm has a market cap of $4.30 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -8.97 and a beta of 1.94. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $10.39 and its 200-day moving average is $11.53. Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. has a one year low of $8.51 and a one year high of $22.97. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53, a current ratio of 1.85 and a quick ratio of 0.55.

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, February 24th. The mining company reported ($0.68) EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.65) by ($0.03). The firm had revenue of $4.33 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.46 billion. Cleveland-Cliffs had a negative net margin of 2.31% and a negative return on equity of 0.59%. Equities analysts predict that Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. will post -0.79 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several research firms have weighed in on CLF. Citigroup reduced their target price on Cleveland-Cliffs from $12.50 to $11.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, December 19th. B. Riley reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Cleveland-Cliffs in a report on Tuesday, February 4th. Morgan Stanley reduced their target price on Cleveland-Cliffs from $13.00 to $11.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, February 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their target price on Cleveland-Cliffs from $17.00 to $15.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, March 4th. Finally, Glj Research reduced their target price on Cleveland-Cliffs from $14.54 to $12.90 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, February 27th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $16.43.

Institutional Trading of Cleveland-Cliffs

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 5.5% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 48,751,789 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $458,267,000 after acquiring an additional 2,556,332 shares during the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. increased its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 13.7% in the third quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 25,893,879 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $330,665,000 after acquiring an additional 3,110,651 shares during the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 3.1% in the fourth quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 21,247,426 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $199,724,000 after acquiring an additional 647,282 shares during the last quarter. Slate Path Capital LP increased its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 35.4% in the fourth quarter. Slate Path Capital LP now owns 16,208,000 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $152,355,000 after acquiring an additional 4,239,000 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its position in shares of Cleveland-Cliffs by 3.2% in the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 8,466,747 shares of the mining company’s stock valued at $79,611,000 after acquiring an additional 264,078 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 67.68% of the company’s stock.

About Cleveland-Cliffs

Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest flat-rolled steel company and the largest iron ore pellet producer in North America. The company is vertically integrated from mining through iron making, steelmaking, rolling, finishing and downstream with hot and cold stamping of steel parts and components. The company was formerly known as Cliffs Natural Resources Inc and changed its name to Cleveland-Cliffs Inc in August 2017.