First Busey Co. (NASDAQ:BUSE) Short Interest Down 54.6% in March

First Busey Co. (NASDAQ:BUSE) was the recipient of a significant decrease in short interest during the month of March. As of March 15th, there was short interest totalling 1,380,000 shares, a decrease of 54.6% from the February 28th total of 3,040,000 shares. Approximately 2.6% of the company’s stock are short sold. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 410,100 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 3.4 days.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of brokerages recently weighed in on BUSE. Piper Sandler cut their price objective on First Busey from $32.00 to $28.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, January 30th. Stephens reissued an “equal weight” rating and issued a $26.00 price target on shares of First Busey in a research report on Monday, February 24th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and set a $33.00 price objective (down from $34.00) on shares of First Busey in a report on Thursday, January 30th. Finally, DA Davidson reiterated a “neutral” rating and issued a $25.00 target price on shares of First Busey in a report on Tuesday, February 25th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $28.00.

First Busey Trading Down 3.1 %

Shares of First Busey stock opened at $21.69 on Friday. First Busey has a 1 year low of $21.21 and a 1 year high of $28.97. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $23.38 and its 200-day simple moving average is $24.64. The company has a market cap of $1.24 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.01 and a beta of 0.84. The company has a current ratio of 0.82, a quick ratio of 0.82 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22.

First Busey (NASDAQ:BUSE) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, January 28th. The bank reported $0.53 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.52 by $0.01. First Busey had a net margin of 17.14% and a return on equity of 8.94%. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that First Busey will post 2.61 EPS for the current year.

First Busey Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, January 31st. Shareholders of record on Friday, January 24th were issued a $0.25 dividend. This is a boost from First Busey’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.24. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, January 24th. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.61%. First Busey’s dividend payout ratio is 50.76%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other First Busey news, Director Stanley J. Bradshaw bought 1,700 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, March 13th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $21.70 per share, with a total value of $36,890.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 482,143 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,462,503.10. This represents a 0.35 % increase in their position. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. 7.10% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of First Busey

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Stifel Financial Corp acquired a new position in shares of First Busey in the third quarter valued at $757,000. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its stake in shares of First Busey by 9.0% in the 3rd quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 482,287 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $12,549,000 after buying an additional 39,900 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC lifted its holdings in shares of First Busey by 168.7% during the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 149,279 shares of the bank’s stock worth $3,884,000 after acquiring an additional 93,733 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in shares of First Busey by 1.7% during the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,295,804 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $33,723,000 after acquiring an additional 22,096 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Swiss National Bank increased its stake in First Busey by 0.9% in the fourth quarter. Swiss National Bank now owns 111,799 shares of the bank’s stock valued at $2,635,000 after acquiring an additional 1,000 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 56.49% of the company’s stock.

About First Busey

First Busey Corporation operates as the bank holding company for Busey Bank that engages in the provision of retail and commercial banking products and services to individual, corporate, institutional, and governmental customers in the United States. It operates through three segments: Banking, Wealth Management, and FirsTech.