NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Plans $0.52 Quarterly Dividend

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, February 27th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, April 4th will be paid a dividend of 0.52 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, April 23rd. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.76%.

NetApp has raised its dividend by an average of 1.3% per year over the last three years. NetApp has a payout ratio of 24.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect NetApp to earn $6.43 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 32.3%.

NetApp Price Performance

NASDAQ:NTAP traded down $6.27 on Thursday, reaching $118.22. 2,810,613 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 1,519,479. The company has a quick ratio of 0.84, a current ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $120.19 and a 200-day simple moving average of $122.04. The firm has a market cap of $24.03 billion, a PE ratio of 21.73, a P/E/G ratio of 2.45 and a beta of 1.23. NetApp has a 12 month low of $86.43 and a 12 month high of $135.45.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 27th. The data storage provider reported $1.54 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.90 by ($0.36). NetApp had a net margin of 17.78% and a return on equity of 123.63%. Equities research analysts forecast that NetApp will post 5.89 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at NetApp

In other news, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $124.29, for a total value of $1,056,465.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 279,782 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,774,104.78. This trade represents a 2.95 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, President Cesar Cernuda sold 22,000 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $114.99, for a total transaction of $2,529,780.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the president now directly owns 27,099 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,116,114.01. This trade represents a 44.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders have sold 60,903 shares of company stock valued at $7,260,341. Company insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages recently commented on NTAP. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price objective on shares of NetApp from $140.00 to $130.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, February 20th. Northland Securities upped their price target on shares of NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Morgan Stanley upped their price target on shares of NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised shares of NetApp to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, February 19th. Finally, Oppenheimer assumed coverage on shares of NetApp in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. They set a “market perform” rating for the company. Eleven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $137.33.

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.