Southern stock: buy or sell?
Updated on:
September 20th, 2019
5
The Southern Company, through its subsidiaries, engages in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity.
Should I buy Southern stock?
Make a decision about when to buy or sell stocks is one of the hardest parts of being a trader or investor. Following a trading plan helps to make decisions easier, quicker and with less hesitations. At Stocks2.com, we like to use very simple but trusted and powerful trend following trading strategies. Simple things usually work the best.These 2 buy setups match with Southern stock now:
| Buy setup | Elegible |
|---|---|
| New all-time high | Yes |
| New 52 week high | Yes |
| Price crossing up 200d MA | No |
| 100d MA crossing up 200d MA | No |
Is Southern stock a buy?
Financial institutions and banks publish stock ratings everyday.
At Stocks2.com, we detected 9 ratings published for SO stock in the last month. The general sentiment of these ratings is bearish for SO stock, with 3 negative ratings.| Date | Analyst / Broker | Previous rating | Current rating |
| 2019-9-6 | UBS Group | n/a | Neutral |
| 2019-8-16 | Morgan Stanley | n/a | Underweight |
| 2019-8-1 | Bank of America | n/a | Neutral |
| 2019-6-19 | Barclays | n/a | Hold |
| 2019-6-13 | Mizuho | Positive | Neutral |
| 2019-4-22 | Credit Suisse Group | n/a | Sell |
| 2019-2-25 | SunTrust Banks | n/a | Hold |
| 2019-2-22 | Evercore ISI | n/a | Underperform |
| 2019-1-24 | Citigroup | Sell | Neutral |
Southern stock analysis
Daily outlook
After marking all time highs today, Southern stayed steady 0.05% to $61.09.
Southern stayed stable 0.05% today to $61.09 after reaching all time highs today. SO shows a strong short term uptrend with several rising tops and rising bottoms. Since its last bottom on September 10th, SO climbed unceasignly breaking out to new all time highs.
Weekly outlook
Southern inched 1.60% this week and peaked a new all time high at $61.27. For 5 weeks in a row, price soared and marked a profit of 6.26%.
Since price and SMA40w lines crossed up late December 2018, SO climbed $18.64 (43.91%). Since early December 2018 when SMA10w and SMA20w crossed up, SO price gained $15.37 per share (33.62%).
Southern stock price history
Southern IPO was on December 31st, 1981 at $0.05 per share1. Since then, SO stock grew a 122,080.00%, with a yearly average of 3,299.50%. If you had invested right after SO's IPO a $1,000 in Southern stock in 1981, it would worth $1,220,800.00 today.
1: Adjusted price after possible price splits or reverse-splits.
Southern stock historical price chart
SO stock reached all-time highs today with a price of $61.27.
Southern stock price target is $55.40
Nobody can reliably foresee how stock prices may evolve in the future. However, many stock price predictions are published every day by banks, financial institutions and independent analysts. The accuracy of these stock price predictions is not very high, and you should not blindly believe and make decisions only based on what this ratings or price target predictions say. For the last 30 days we found 8 price predictions for Southern stock:| Date | Analyst / Broker | Action | Previous target | Current target | Diff |
| 2019-9-6 | UBS Group | Raises Target | $58.00 | $62.00 | 6.9% |
| 2019-8-16 | Morgan Stanley | Lowers Target | $55.00 | $54.00 | -1.8% |
| 2019-8-1 | Bank of America | Lowers Target | $61.00 | $60.00 | -1.6% |
| 2019-6-19 | Barclays | Reiterates | n/a | $57.00 | - |
| 2019-6-13 | Mizuho | Raises Target | $48.50 | $55.00 | 13.4% |
| 2019-4-22 | Credit Suisse Group | Set Price Target | n/a | $51.00 | - |
| 2019-2-25 | SunTrust Banks | Reiterates | n/a | $52.00 | - |
| 2019-2-22 | Evercore ISI | Upgrades | $45.00 | $52.00 | 15.6% |
| (in average) | $53.50 | $55.40 | 4.0% |
Financials and fundamental analysis
Earnings date and Earnings per Share
Southern presented tiny results for 2018-Q4 on February. Southern inched Earnings per Share (EPS) by 4.20%, beating analysts estimates of $0.24. Southern posted $0.25.| Quarter | Reporting date | Estimated EPS | Actual EPS | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q2 | - | n/a | 0.58 | n/a |
| 2017-Q3 | 2017-11-01 | 1.07 | 1.12 | 4.7% |
| 2017-Q4 | 2018-02-21 | 0.46 | 0.51 | 10.9% |
| 2018-Q1 | 2018-05-02 | 0.84 | 0.88 | 4.8% |
| 2018-Q2 | 2018-08-08 | 0.69 | 0.8 | 15.9% |
| 2018-Q3 | 2018-11-07 | 1.07 | 1.14 | 6.5% |
| 2018-Q4 | 2019-02-20 | 0.24 | 0.25 | 4.2% |
| 2019-Q1 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q2 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q3 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Annual financial results
In 2018, Southern annual turnover gained a slightly good 2.01% to $23,495.00 M USD from $23,031.00 marked in 2017. In the same way, its earnings margin (compared to revenues) rose to 9.54%, that is $2,242.00 million.| Year | Sales | YoY | Income/(margin) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | $17,090 M | - | $1,710 M10.0% | - |
| 2014 | $18,467 M | 8.06% | $2,031 M11.0% | 18.77% |
| 2015 | $17,489 M | -5.30% | $2,435 M13.9% | 19.89% |
| 2016 | $19,896 M | 13.76% | $2,493 M12.5% | 2.38% |
| 2017 | $23,031 M | 15.76% | $880 M3.8% | -64.70% |
| 2018 | $23,495 M | 2.01% | $2,242 M9.5% | 154.77% |
Quarterly financial results
Southern posted $5,337.00 million in sales for 2018-Q4, a -13.35% decline compared to previous quarter. Reported quarter earnings marked $282.00 million with a profit margin of 5.28%. Profit margin collapsed a -13.68% compared to previous quarter when profit margin was 18.96%. When comparing turnover to same quarter last year, Southern sales marked an awful slide and eased a -5.17%.| Quarter | Sales1 | QoQ2 | Income1/(margin) | QoQ2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q2 | $5,410 M | - | $-1,370 M-25.3% | - |
| 2017-Q3 | $6,201 M | 14.62% | $1,079 M17.4% | -178.76% |
| 2017-Q4 | $5,628 M | -9.24% | $501 M8.9% | -53.57% |
| 2018-Q1 | $6,372 M | 13.22% | $942 M14.8% | 88.02% |
| 2018-Q2 | $5,627 M | -11.69% | $-150 M-2.7% | -115.92% |
| 2018-Q3 | $6,159 M | 9.45% | $1,168 M19.0% | -878.67% |
| 2018-Q4 | $5,337 M | -13.35% | $282 M5.3% | -75.86% |
| 2019-Q1 | $5,412 M | 1.41% | $2,088 M38.6% | 640.43% |
Southern ownership
When you are planning to invest in a company, it's worth to have a look its ownership structure.Southern shares owned by insiders (that is, founders, CEO, CTO, main executives or other management staff) currently counts a 0.08% of all shares.
In case of Southern stock, 57.65% of its shares are held by institutions (mutual funds, pension funds, big banks and other large financial institutions). Bearish positions for SO stock account 0.00%, no big difference from last month.
For a better understanding, the following table shows ownership data compared to other related stocks:
| SO | AEP | D | DUK | EE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market cap | $64.1 B | $46.0 B | $65.0 B | $68.8 B | $2.7 B |
| Total shares | 1,050.0 M | 493.8 M | 803.4 M | 728.6 M | 40.8 M |
| Float shares | 1,040.0 M | 493.2 M | 800.7 M | 727.6 M | 40.4 M |
| - Institutional holdings (%) | 57.6% | 75.8% | 60.2% | 61.7% | 96.3% |
| - Insider holdings (%) | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 0.1% | 1.5% |
| Shares in short selling | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Southern summary
| Friday, September 20th, 2019 | |
|---|---|
| Open | $61.20 |
| Close | $61.09 |
| Day range | $60.64 - $61.27 |
| Previous close | $61.06 |
| Session gain | 0.05% |
| Average true range | $0.79 |
| 50d mov avg | $57.49 |
| 100d mov avg | $55.67 |
| 200d mov avg | $51.69 |
| Daily pattern | lb03c |
| Weekly pattern | |
Southern performance
To measure stock performance is always good to compare with competitors or related stocks. We chose American Electric Power, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, El Paso Electric, Entergy, FirstEnergy, NextEra Energy, NRG Energy and PPL as the bechmarking frame for Southern stock.| Stock | 3m | 6m | 12m |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOSouthern | 9.76% | 20.42% | 45.56% |
| AEPAmerican Electric... | 2.55% | 11.17% | 34.90% |
| DDominion Energy | 4.49% | 9.71% | 19.72% |
| DUKDuke Energy | 6.66% | 6.42% | 23.52% |
| EEEl Paso Electric | 2.55% | 17.44% | 16.09% |
| ETREntergy | 11.33% | 21.91% | 44.88% |
| FEFirstEnergy | 11.11% | 17.26% | 35.33% |
| NEENextEra Energy | 8.97% | 17.36% | 35.02% |
| NRGNRG Energy | 10.42% | -8.53% | 7.63% |
| PPL | 0.73% | 0.67% | 12.08% |
Southern competitors
One check before trading any stock is to have a look a list of its competitors, in this case for Southern. We chose 9 companies as Southern competitors as they are in the same industry or have similar market objectives.- American Electric Power (AEP)
- Dominion Energy (D)
- Duke Energy (DUK)
- El Paso Electric (EE)
- Entergy (ETR)
- FirstEnergy (FE)
- NextEra Energy (NEE)
- NRG Energy (NRG)
- PPL (PPL)
Latest Southern stock news
- InvestorPlace3 Big Stock Charts for Wednesday: Southern Co, CF Industries Holdings and National-Oilwell VarcoJuly 31, 2019
- Seeking AlphaCopper Attempts To Rally - Southern Copper Shares Follow The Red MetalJuly 25, 2019
- InvestorPlace3 Big Stock Charts for Monday: Southern Co., Fastenal and PepsiCoJuly 22, 2019
- InvestorPlaceKansas City Southern Earnings: KSU Stock Surges on Q2 ResultsJuly 19, 2019
- InvestorPlace3 Big Stock Charts for Tuesday: Norfolk Southern, Synchrony Financial and Dish NetworkJune 11, 2019