Traders Purchase Large Volume of Altice USA Call Options (NYSE:ATUS)

Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS - Get Free Report) saw unusually large options trading activity on Tuesday. Investors acquired 5,692 call options on the company. This is an increase of 143% compared to the average daily volume of 2,339 call options.

Institutional Trading of Altice USA

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in ATUS. Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management LLC acquired a new position in Altice USA during the second quarter worth $25,000. Headlands Technologies LLC bought a new position in Altice USA during the first quarter worth $46,000. Quadrature Capital Ltd acquired a new position in shares of Altice USA in the fourth quarter valued at $47,000. Alpine Global Management LLC bought a new position in shares of Altice USA in the first quarter valued at about $65,000. Finally, Swedbank AB acquired a new stake in shares of Altice USA during the 1st quarter worth about $66,000. 54.85% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Altice USA Stock Up 2.3 %

Altice USA stock traded up $0.05 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $2.22. 4,476,526 shares of the company's stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 3,558,606. The company's 50 day simple moving average is $1.84 and its 200-day simple moving average is $2.14. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.02 billion, a P/E ratio of 222.00, a PEG ratio of 2.49 and a beta of 1.51. Altice USA has a fifty-two week low of $1.52 and a fifty-two week high of $3.66.

Altice USA (NYSE:ATUS - Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, August 1st. The company reported $0.03 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.08 by ($0.05). Altice USA had a negative return on equity of 1.54% and a negative net margin of 0.62%. The company had revenue of $2.24 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.25 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.17 earnings per share. The business's quarterly revenue was down 3.6% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts expect that Altice USA will post 0.1 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts have recently weighed in on the company. The Goldman Sachs Group started coverage on Altice USA in a research report on Monday, July 1st. They set a "sell" rating and a $2.00 target price for the company. UBS Group cut shares of Altice USA from a "buy" rating to a "neutral" rating and lowered their price target for the stock from $4.00 to $2.00 in a research report on Friday, August 2nd. Finally, Evercore ISI dropped their price target on shares of Altice USA from $3.00 to $2.00 and set an "in-line" rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, July 2nd. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and one has issued a buy rating to the company's stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Altice USA has an average rating of "Hold" and an average price target of $1.97.

Altice USA Company Profile

Altice USA, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, provides broadband communications and video services in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. It offers broadband, video, telephony, and mobile services to residential and business customers. The company's video services include delivery of broadcast stations and cable networks; over the top services; video-on-demand, high-definition channels, digital video recorder, and pay-per-view services; and platforms for video programming through mobile applications.