Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) Downgraded by Zacks Investment Research to “Hold”

Zacks Investment Research downgraded shares of Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) from a strong-buy rating to a hold rating in a report published on Tuesday morning, Zacks.com reports.

According to Zacks, “Criteo SA is a global technology company that specializes in performance display advertising. The Company offers clients a range of solutions such as click per cost, online banner displays, user optimization, data security, and search management tools to control campaign costs. It serves companies in the online retail, classifieds, and travel segments. Criteo SA is headquartered in Paris, France. “

Several other research analysts have also recently commented on CRTO. BidaskClub cut Criteo from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research note on Thursday, June 27th. BMO Capital Markets lowered their target price on Criteo from $26.00 to $21.00 and set a market perform rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, May 1st. They noted that the move was a valuation call. Rosenblatt Securities reaffirmed a hold rating and set a $23.00 target price on shares of Criteo in a report on Friday, May 3rd. ValuEngine raised Criteo from a strong sell rating to a sell rating in a report on Friday, April 26th. Finally, Macquarie downgraded Criteo from an outperform rating to a neutral rating and set a $19.54 target price for the company. in a research report on Wednesday, May 1st. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating to the company. Criteo has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $29.09.

NASDAQ:CRTO opened at $17.74 on Tuesday. Criteo has a one year low of $16.46 and a one year high of $36.66. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $18.79. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.14 billion, a PE ratio of 10.63, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.08 and a beta of 0.91.

Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 30th. The information services provider reported $0.34 EPS for the quarter, topping the Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimate of $0.21 by $0.13. Criteo had a return on equity of 10.75% and a net margin of 3.83%. The business had revenue of $235.69 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $234.24 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $0.60 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was down 2.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Criteo will post 1.66 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

In other news, COO Mary Spilman sold 1,567 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, June 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $17.05, for a total value of $26,717.35. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 4.01% of the company’s stock.

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of CRTO. Acadian Asset Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Criteo by 75.0% in the first quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC now owns 1,928,309 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $38,629,000 after acquiring an additional 826,240 shares during the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp increased its position in Criteo by 18.4% during the fourth quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 3,857,225 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $87,637,000 after buying an additional 599,720 shares during the last quarter. Amundi Pioneer Asset Management Inc. increased its position in Criteo by 55.5% during the first quarter. Amundi Pioneer Asset Management Inc. now owns 1,137,060 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $22,775,000 after buying an additional 405,600 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC increased its position in Criteo by 89.7% during the first quarter. FMR LLC now owns 823,009 shares of the information services provider’s stock worth $16,485,000 after buying an additional 389,100 shares during the last quarter. Finally, DNB Asset Management AS acquired a new position in Criteo during the first quarter worth $4,546,000. 80.59% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Criteo Company Profile

Criteo SA, a technology company, provides an advertising platform for the open Internet in France and internationally. The company’s Criteo Shopper Graph, which collects clients’ proprietary commerce data, such as transaction activity on their digital properties. Its Criteo AI Engine solutions include Lookalike finder algorithms; recommendation algorithms; predictive bidding algorithms; bidding engine that executes campaigns based on certain objectives set by its clients; dynamic creative optimization+, which assembles customized creative advertising content by optimizing each individual creative component in the advertisement; software systems and processes, which enable data synchronization, storage, and analysis of distributed computing infrastructure in various geographies; and experimentation platform, an offline/online platform to enhance the capabilities and effectiveness of prediction models.