George Kurian Sells 8,500 Shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Stock

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, October 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $126.11, for a total value of $1,071,935.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 292,778 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $36,922,233.58. This represents a 0.00 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link.

NetApp Trading Down 0.6 %

Shares of NetApp stock traded down $0.74 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $119.01. 1,521,744 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,832,735. NetApp, Inc. has a 1-year low of $70.82 and a 1-year high of $135.01. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a current ratio of 0.96 and a quick ratio of 0.91. The firm has a market capitalization of $24.49 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.77 and a beta of 1.23. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $123.60 and its 200 day moving average price is $119.85.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 28th. The data storage provider reported $1.56 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.45 by $0.11. The business had revenue of $1.54 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.53 billion. NetApp had a return on equity of 121.41% and a net margin of 17.01%. NetApp’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $0.84 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.71 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, October 23rd. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 4th will be paid a $0.52 dividend. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.75%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 4th. NetApp’s payout ratio is 44.83%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On NetApp

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Hollencrest Capital Management acquired a new position in shares of NetApp during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $26,000. Northwest Investment Counselors LLC bought a new position in NetApp in the third quarter valued at about $27,000. Redwood Wealth Management Group LLC bought a new position in NetApp in the second quarter valued at about $32,000. J.Safra Asset Management Corp increased its stake in shares of NetApp by 706.3% in the first quarter. J.Safra Asset Management Corp now owns 258 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $27,000 after buying an additional 226 shares during the period. Finally, New Covenant Trust Company N.A. acquired a new stake in NetApp during the first quarter worth approximately $28,000. Institutional investors own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

NTAP has been the topic of several recent research reports. Barclays raised their target price on NetApp from $116.00 to $119.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. UBS Group raised their target price on NetApp from $121.00 to $134.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. Citigroup raised their target price on NetApp from $120.00 to $130.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 15th. Bank of America lifted their price objective on NetApp from $105.00 to $110.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Finally, Loop Capital upgraded NetApp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the company from $121.00 to $150.00 in a research note on Tuesday, September 3rd. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, NetApp presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $129.06.

NetApp Company Profile

NetApp, Inc provides cloud-led and data-centric services to manage and share data on-premises, and private and public clouds worldwide. It operates in two segments, Hybrid Cloud and Public Could. The company offers intelligent data management software, such as NetApp ONTAP, NetApp Snapshot, NetApp SnapCenter Backup Management, NetApp SnapMirror Data Replication, NetApp SnapLock Data Compliance, and storage infrastructure solutions, including NetApp All-Flash FAS series, NetApp Fabric Attached Storage, NetApp E/EF series, and NetApp StorageGRID.