[Reuters] – Wells Fargo Securities, the investment banking arm of Wells Fargo & Co, has been added to the roster of primary dealers that trade directly with the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, the bank said Monday. It becomes the 23rd member of primary dealers, which are comprised of brokerages that trade U.S. government securities and certain other securities with the Fed. “Primary Dealership will allow us to better serve our existing customer franchise and is a logical extension of our client-focused business model,” said Walter Dolhare, head of Wells Fargo Securities’ market division, in a statement. Read more on this. Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) , valued at $247.00B, began trading this morning at $47.97. During today’s session, WFC traded between $47.91 to $48.88 with the price of the stock fluctuating between $44.50 to $58.77 over the last 52 weeks. Wells Fargo (WFC) shares are currently priced at 11.68x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively inexpensive compared to the industry’s 15.13x earnings multiple for the same period. And for dividend hunters, the company pays shareholders $1.50 per share annually in dividends, yielding 3.11%. In a review of the consensus earnings estimate this quarter, 30 sell-side analysts are looking at $1.02 per share, which would be $0.01 worse than the year-ago quarter and a $0.07 sequential decrease. The full-year EPS estimate is $4.13 which would be a $0.02 setback than last year’s full-year earnings. The quarterly earnings estimate is based on a consensus revenue forecast of the current quarter of $22.24 Billion. If realized, that would be a 4.32% increase over the year-ago quarter. More recently, Piper Jaffray downgraded WFC from Neutral to Underweight (Apr 15, 2016). Previously, Sandler O’Neill downgraded WFC from Buy to Hold. With the above information in mind, readers should note that the average price target is $55.14, which is 14.95% above where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:WFC) Similar Articles: Stock Update: Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) – Wells Fargo First Quarter 2016 Earnings Information Stock Update: Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) – Wells Fargo Closed-End Funds Declare Monthly Dividends Stock Update: Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) – Wells Fargo Enters Agreement with Zurich to Sell Crop Insurance Business