Beech Hill Advisors Inc. Acquires 1,784 Shares of Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN)

Beech Hill Advisors Inc. grew its holdings in Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) by 30.2% in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 7,699 shares of the life sciences company’s stock after buying an additional 1,784 shares during the period. Beech Hill Advisors Inc.’s holdings in Illumina were worth $1,004,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Primecap Management Co. CA raised its holdings in Illumina by 462.5% in the 2nd quarter. Primecap Management Co. CA now owns 2,428,760 shares of the life sciences company’s stock valued at $253,514,000 after acquiring an additional 1,997,010 shares during the period. Millennium Management LLC increased its position in Illumina by 305.0% during the 2nd quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 1,485,599 shares of the life sciences company’s stock worth $155,067,000 after buying an additional 1,118,747 shares during the period. Capital World Investors lifted its holdings in shares of Illumina by 41.1% during the first quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 2,753,504 shares of the life sciences company’s stock worth $378,111,000 after buying an additional 801,814 shares in the last quarter. Marshall Wace LLP bought a new stake in shares of Illumina in the second quarter valued at about $77,628,000. Finally, Findlay Park Partners LLP acquired a new position in shares of Illumina in the first quarter valued at about $100,120,000. 89.42% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have weighed in on ILMN. JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped their price objective on shares of Illumina from $130.00 to $125.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, August 7th. HSBC upgraded Illumina from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $180.00 price target for the company in a research note on Thursday. Daiwa Capital Markets raised Illumina from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price objective for the company from $120.00 to $154.00 in a report on Friday, August 16th. Argus upgraded shares of Illumina from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $150.00 target price for the company in a research report on Wednesday, August 28th. Finally, StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Illumina in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. They set a “buy” rating for the company. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have given a hold rating, thirteen have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $152.05.

Illumina Trading Down 2.5 %

Shares of NASDAQ ILMN opened at $143.89 on Thursday. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $131.95 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $120.95. The stock has a market cap of $22.92 billion, a P/E ratio of -17.66 and a beta of 1.15. Illumina, Inc. has a 52-week low of $89.00 and a 52-week high of $151.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.04, a quick ratio of 0.86 and a current ratio of 1.11.

Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, August 6th. The life sciences company reported $0.36 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.12 by $0.24. Illumina had a positive return on equity of 3.08% and a negative net margin of 68.73%. The business had revenue of $1.11 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.09 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned $0.32 EPS. Illumina’s revenue for the quarter was down 5.4% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Illumina, Inc. will post 3.63 EPS for the current year.

Illumina Profile

Illumina, Inc offers sequencing- and array-based solutions for genetic and genomic analysis in the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It operates through Core Illumina and GRAIL segments. The company offers sequencing and array-based instruments and consumables, which include reagents, flow cells, and library preparation; whole-genome sequencing kits, which sequence entire genomes of various size and complexity; and targeted resequencing kits, which sequence exomes, specific genes, and RNA or other genomic regions of interest.