Barclays analyst latest to give LPL Financial shares room to run
With a nod toward LPL Financial Holdings Inc.’s recent successes in both recruiting financial advisors as well as signing up large outside firms like banks to use its platform, Barclays Equity Research slapped a brand-new “overweight” rating on shares of LPL Financial (LPLA).
As Barclays initiated its coverage of LPL Financial last Thursday, it set a price target of $275 per share for the company, which were trading near $244 close to midday on Monday. LPL recently reported $1.24 billion in client assets as of June 30.
Over the summer, other analysts also cited the potential for further appreciation in the share price of LPL Financial, the largest wealth management firm in the country by financial advisor head count, with some 21,000 advisors across its varied work platforms.
In July, CFRA Research raised it price target on LPL Financial shares by $32 to $266, saying that the firm’s forward price-to-earnings ratio of 16 times its current earnings per share estimate for this year was “a premium to peers due to strong organic growth and impressive advisor recruitment.”
And in August, Wolfe Research bumped its price target to $265 per share, an increase of $36; that came after LPL Financial announced that Prudential Financial Inc. is moving $50 billion in the retail brokerage and investment advisory assets of 2,600 financial advisors from Prudential Advisors’ current custodian, Fidelity’s National Financial Services, to LPL Financial.
Barclays also outlined reasons for a potential downside to shares of LPL Financial, all of would undermine firms across the wealth management industry.
“Our downside case assumes macro softness resulting in slower growth in advisory and brokerage assets at LPL, a more rapidly declining
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