NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Cut to Hold at StockNews.com

StockNews.com downgraded shares of NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report released on Tuesday morning.

Several other equities research analysts have also recently weighed in on NTAP. Wedbush reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $120.00 price objective on shares of NetApp in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Bank of America boosted their price objective on NetApp from $115.00 to $121.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on NetApp from $135.00 to $140.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Citigroup upped their target price on NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, Northland Securities upped their target price on NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, NetApp has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $137.53.

NetApp Trading Down 0.1 %

NTAP opened at $117.73 on Tuesday. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $120.65 and a 200 day moving average of $121.95. The company has a current ratio of 0.91, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39. NetApp has a 12 month low of $83.80 and a 12 month high of $135.45. The firm has a market cap of $23.94 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.64, a P/E/G ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.23.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.09. NetApp had a return on equity of 123.63% and a net margin of 17.78%. The company had revenue of $1.66 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.23 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts forecast that NetApp will post 5.89 EPS for the current year.

NetApp Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, January 22nd. Investors of record on Friday, January 3rd were paid a $0.52 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, January 3rd. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.77%. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 38.24%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other NetApp news, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 326 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.44, for a total transaction of $38,285.44. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, Director Thomas Michael Nevens sold 3,333 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $119.23, for a total value of $397,393.59. Following the sale, the director now owns 9,277 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,106,096.71. This represents a 26.43 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 64,562 shares of company stock valued at $7,687,180 over the last quarter. 0.47% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of NetApp

A number of hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Northwest Investment Counselors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 3rd quarter valued at $27,000. Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings Ltd. purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 4th quarter valued at $26,000. Assetmark Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 826.9% during the 4th quarter. Assetmark Inc. now owns 241 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $28,000 after purchasing an additional 215 shares during the last quarter. Synergy Investment Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 4th quarter valued at $32,000. Finally, Golden State Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 4th quarter valued at $35,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

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.