NetApp, Inc. (NTAP) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.52 on July 24th

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, May 30th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, July 5th will be given a dividend of 0.52 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, July 24th. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.60%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, July 5th. This is a positive change from NetApp’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.50.

NetApp has increased its dividend payment by an average of 1.4% annually over the last three years. NetApp has a payout ratio of 28.2% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect NetApp to earn $5.96 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.08 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 34.9%.

NetApp Trading Down 0.3 %

NASDAQ NTAP opened at $129.88 on Wednesday. The company has a fifty day simple moving average of $116.01 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $101.75. The stock has a market cap of $26.73 billion, a P/E ratio of 27.99, a P/E/G ratio of 5.21 and a beta of 1.27. NetApp has a 12-month low of $70.82 and a 12-month high of $131.02. The company has a current ratio of 1.19, a quick ratio of 1.15 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.74.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, May 30th. The data storage provider reported $1.80 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.48 by $0.32. NetApp had a net margin of 15.73% and a return on equity of 114.54%. The business had revenue of $1.67 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $1.20 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 5.5% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts forecast that NetApp will post 5.47 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 871 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, April 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $103.02, for a total value of $89,730.42. Following the sale, the executive vice president now owns 9,601 shares in the company, valued at $989,095.02. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. In related news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 871 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, April 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $103.02, for a total transaction of $89,730.42. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 9,601 shares in the company, valued at $989,095.02. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, President Cesar Cernuda sold 22,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, June 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $129.46, for a total transaction of $2,848,120.00. Following the transaction, the president now owns 64,789 shares in the company, valued at $8,387,583.94. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 42,205 shares of company stock worth $5,193,529 over the last 90 days. 0.37% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages recently issued reports on NTAP. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $106.00 to $127.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 12th. Bank of America raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $85.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 29th. Barclays raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $100.00 to $116.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, May 31st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upgraded shares of NetApp from an “underweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and raised their price target for the company from $95.00 to $125.00 in a research report on Friday, May 31st. Finally, StockNews.com lowered shares of NetApp from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, March 7th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have issued a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $117.81.

NetApp declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a stock buyback program on Thursday, May 30th that allows the company to buyback $1.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the data storage provider to reacquire up to 4% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are usually an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

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.