William Blair Downgrades Parsons (NYSE:PSN) to Market Perform

William Blair lowered shares of Parsons (NYSE:PSN) from an outperform rating to a market perform rating in a research note released on Thursday morning, Marketbeat reports.

A number of other brokerages have also recently issued reports on PSN. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Parsons from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price objective for the company from $103.00 to $111.00 in a report on Thursday, December 12th. Robert W. Baird upped their price objective on shares of Parsons from $103.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, October 31st. KeyCorp cut their target price on shares of Parsons from $122.00 to $102.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. TD Cowen dropped their price target on Parsons from $117.00 to $105.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, January 8th. Finally, Raymond James lowered Parsons from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 2nd. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $108.25.

Parsons Price Performance

NYSE:PSN opened at $85.34 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $9.06 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 129.31, a PEG ratio of 1.44 and a beta of 0.74. The company has a 50-day moving average of $95.10 and a 200-day moving average of $95.99. Parsons has a 52 week low of $64.33 and a 52 week high of $114.68. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.47, a quick ratio of 1.55 and a current ratio of 1.55.

Parsons (NYSE:PSN) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, October 30th. The company reported $0.80 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.73 by $0.07. Parsons had a return on equity of 12.74% and a net margin of 1.21%. The company had revenue of $1.81 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.63 billion. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Parsons will post 3.02 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Parsons

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in PSN. State Street Corp boosted its holdings in Parsons by 60.6% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 1,634,155 shares of the company’s stock valued at $169,429,000 after acquiring an additional 616,707 shares during the last quarter. Wedge Capital Management L L P NC acquired a new position in Parsons during the 3rd quarter valued at about $62,514,000. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC boosted its stake in shares of Parsons by 61.7% in the 3rd quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 1,123,366 shares of the company’s stock valued at $116,471,000 after purchasing an additional 428,662 shares during the last quarter. Driehaus Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Parsons during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $29,302,000. Finally, Principal Financial Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Parsons by 18.1% during the third quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. now owns 1,192,943 shares of the company’s stock worth $123,685,000 after buying an additional 183,117 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 98.02% of the company’s stock.

About Parsons

Parsons Corporation provides integrated solutions and services in the defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure markets in North America, the Middle East, and internationally. The company operates through Federal Solutions and Critical Infrastructure segments. The Federal Solutions segment provides critical technologies, such as cybersecurity; missile defense; intelligence; space launch and ground systems; space and weapon system resiliency; geospatial intelligence; signals intelligence; environmental remediation; border security, critical infrastructure protection; counter unmanned air systems; biometrics and bio surveillance solutions to U.S.