Shares
of Meridian Bioscience (NASDAQ:VIVO) saw unusually-strong trading volume on Friday following a dividend announcement from the company, ARN reports. Approximately 488,537 shares traded hands during trading, an increase of 56% from the previous session’s volume of 313,124 shares.The stock last traded at $17.69 and had previously closed at $17.34.The newly announced dividend is will be paid on Friday, February 13th. Stockholders of record on Monday, February 2nd will be paid a dividend of $0.20 per share
. This represents a $0.80 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.61%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, January 29th. A number of analysts have recently weighed in on VIVO shares. Analysts at Craig Hallum upgraded shares of Meridian Bioscience from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price
target for the stock from $19.00 to $22.00 in a research note on Friday. Analysts at Zacks upgraded shares of Meridian Bioscience from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $17.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Monday, January 12th. Analysts at Raymond James downgraded shares of Meridian Bioscience from a “market perform” rating to an “underperform” rating in a research note on Friday, January 2nd. Finally, analysts at TheStreet downgraded shares of Meridian Bioscience from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Friday, December 5th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the company. Meridian Bioscience currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $20.50.The stock has a 50-day moving average of $16.67 and a 200-day moving average of $18.17. The company
has a market cap of $739.2 million and a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.89.Meridian Bioscience (NASDAQ:VIVO) last released its earnings data on Thursday, January 22nd. The company reported $0.19 earnings per share for the quarter, meeting the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.19. The company had revenue of $48.00 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $46.20 million. Analysts expect that Meridian Bioscience will post $0.86 EPS for the current fiscal year.
Meridian Bioscience, Inc (NASDAQ:VIVO) is an integrated life science company. The Company is engaged in developing, manufacturing, selling and distribution of clinical diagnostic test kits, for certain gastrointestinal, viral, respiratory and parasitic infectious diseases; the manufacture and distribution of bulk antigens, antibodies, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)/ quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) reagents, nucleotides, competent cells and bioresearch reagents used by researchers and other diagnostic manufacturers, and the contract development and manufacture of proteins and other biologicals under cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) conditions for use by biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
engaged in research for new drugs and vaccines.