Lincoln Capital LLC Has $6.78 Million Stock Position in Linde plc (NASDAQ:LIN)

Lincoln Capital LLC lowered its stake in Linde plc (NASDAQ:LIN) by 0.3% during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 14,597 shares of the basic materials company’s stock after selling 51 shares during the quarter. Linde makes up approximately 1.5% of Lincoln Capital LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 17th largest position. Lincoln Capital LLC’s holdings in Linde were worth $6,778,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its position in Linde by 1.3% during the fourth quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 10,796,924 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $4,434,406,000 after buying an additional 141,322 shares during the last quarter. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Linde during the fourth quarter worth approximately $3,066,825,000. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main increased its position in Linde by 3.6% during the fourth quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main now owns 3,959,993 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $1,624,462,000 after buying an additional 138,585 shares during the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. increased its position in Linde by 2.3% during the fourth quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 2,830,970 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $1,162,708,000 after buying an additional 64,362 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada increased its position in Linde by 6.2% during the third quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 2,210,751 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $823,174,000 after buying an additional 129,610 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.80% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. HSBC reduced their price objective on Linde from $458.00 to $452.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Monday, May 6th. UBS Group cut Linde from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $482.00 to $510.00 in a report on Wednesday, March 27th. Citigroup cut Linde from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and boosted their price target for the company from $475.00 to $500.00 in a research note on Wednesday, April 10th. BMO Capital Markets cut their price target on Linde from $510.00 to $475.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, May 6th. Finally, Mizuho upped their target price on Linde from $510.00 to $512.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, May 3rd. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $468.83.

Linde Trading Up 0.3 %

NASDAQ LIN traded up $1.52 on Friday, reaching $441.74. The company had a trading volume of 190,706 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,048,779. The firm has a market cap of $212.34 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.15, a P/E/G ratio of 2.75 and a beta of 0.95. Linde plc has a fifty-two week low of $358.37 and a fifty-two week high of $477.71. The business has a 50 day moving average of $435.99 and a two-hundred day moving average of $433.60. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.38, a current ratio of 0.91 and a quick ratio of 0.76.

Linde (NASDAQ:LIN) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 2nd. The basic materials company reported $3.75 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.68 by $0.07. The business had revenue of $8.10 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $8.38 billion. Linde had a return on equity of 17.49% and a net margin of 19.26%. Linde’s quarterly revenue was down 1.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $3.42 earnings per share. Analysts forecast that Linde plc will post 15.51 EPS for the current year.

Linde Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, June 18th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, June 4th were issued a dividend of $1.39 per share. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, June 4th. This represents a $5.56 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.26%. Linde’s payout ratio is currently 43.13%.

About Linde

Linde plc operates as an industrial gas company in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South Pacific. It offers atmospheric gases, including oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and rare gases; and process gases, such as carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen, electronic gases, specialty gases, and acetylene.