First Financial Bancorp (FFBC): The long term indicators on the stock call for a Buy today

First Financial Bancorp (FFBC) saw an uptrend of 13.82% in the recent trading with $29.40 being its most recent. The current price level 4.07% lower than the highest price of $28.25 marked by the stock while trading over the past 52-weeks, whereas it is 54.74% higher than the lowest price of $19.00 the company dropped to over past 52-weeks. The latest news story on FFBC appeared in (GuruFocus.com) under the title “First Financial Bancorp (FFBC) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Highlights: Strong Earnings and Deposit.”.

3 Tiny Stocks Primed to Explode The world's greatest investor — Warren Buffett — has a simple formula for making big money in the markets. He buys up valuable assets when they are very cheap. For stock market investors that means buying up cheap small cap stocks like these with huge upside potential.

We've set up an alert service to help smart investors take full advantage of the small cap stocks primed for big returns.

Click here for full details and to join for free.

Sponsored

Squeezing the time span to 30 day period shows us the stock is currently trading -1.24% below one month high and is +22.25% above of the lowest during that time. Looking into the simple moving average, First Financial Bancorp (FFBC)’s stock stands at a SMA-50 of $25.41 while that of 5-day is reading $26.37.

Daily rise and fall of price influence many of the traders, and in order to overcome the fluctuating effect of that and to watch the stock closely, traders focus more on stock’s 200-day moving average. At various points in trading activity, investors are more likely to be making use of that measure as a strong indicator in figuring out their support and resistance levels, and FFBC’s SMA-200 as of now is $23.49.

Do analysts rate it as a buy, sell or hold?

Irrespective of recent performance, what’s important is what the future holds. In uncertain economic times, a clear picture is difficult to get. Analysts generally have a good understanding of the market works, which gives them a leg up in making predictions. Currently, the stock has been recommended as Hold by 2 of the brokerage firms. Analyst ratings are often compiled into a single score from 1 to 5. The score of 1 signifies buy or strong buy, the score of 2 signifies outperform, the score of 3 means hold, and the score of 4 indicates underperform. The simple numeric range of brokerage firm referenced at the scale of 1 to 5 reads a current average recommendation of 3.00 for the stock.

First Financial Bancorp Earnings – What Happened With FFBC

Coming around sales and income figures on FFBC Stock Income Statement, public trading companies under normal circumstances post earnings and revenues near to average estimates by the Wall Street analysts, but those could came either above or below estimates and known as surprise factor. First Financial Bancorp (FFBC) last released financial results for the quarter that ended 9/30/2024, posting a surprise factor of -1.60% for net revenue.

FFBC – First Financial Bancorp Stock Earnings Estimates

The perspective of First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC)’s current quarter earnings identifies that analysts are in consensus over the estimate of 0.61 for stock’s EPS in the current quarter. Company’s EPS for the last quarter was 0.6.

Investors get the exact data about the key information of institutional ownership in a listed company through its 13F filings at the Stock Exchange Commission (SEC). The total number of common shares currently owned by the public is 95.14 million. FFBC does have institutional investors; and they hold 78.20% of the stock.

First Financial Bancorp – Insider Activity and Holdings

As on 2024-06-30, BLACKROCK INC. was the top most holder in First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC) with an ownership of 13.86 million shares of the company or 14.7072 of the stake worth $307.9 million. The filing also reveals VANGUARD GROUP INC as the second largest holder in the company with a control over 11.4931 of the outstanding shares. Its stake is worth $240.61 million for having 10.83 million shares in hand.

DIMENSIONAL FUND ADVISORS LP also came holding a key position in the company during the recent quarter and it now holds 7.1453 of the outstanding shares. With this there are now 339.0 institutions which have possession in FFBC’s shares.

Currently, the stock has been recommended as Hold by 2 of the brokerage firms. Analyst ratings are often compiled into a single score from 1 to 5. The score of 1 signifies buy or strong buy, the score of 2 signifies outperform, the score of 3 means hold, and the score of 4 indicates underperform. The simple numeric range of brokerage firm referenced at the scale of 1 to 5 reads a current average recommendation of 3.00 for the stock.

The liquidity is a key characteristic of any stock and is the main point of focus of both short-term as well as long term investors before start trading into a stock. In recently reported quarter, First Financial Bancorp has a debt to equity ratio of 0.47.

Technical Analysis of First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC) stock

To comprehend better with the trade moves and investors’ behavior, exploring the short, medium and long term technical indicators along with average volume of a stock is an effective way to make use of. When looking into those indicators for First Financial Bancorp (FFBC), we notice that the stock’s 20-day average volume is at 474,285 shares and 100% of short term indicators are suggesting the stock as Buy. Medium term indicators at an average of 100% are spotting the stock at Buy with its 50-day average volume of 427,830 shares. And to end, FFBC’s 100-day average volume is 430,404 shares with 100% of the long-term indicators pointing towards Buy for the stock.