Lorenzo Daniel De Sells 326 Shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Stock

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 326 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred 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 legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website.

Lorenzo Daniel De also recently made the following trade(s):

• On Tuesday, September 24th, Lorenzo Daniel De sold 1,685 shares of NetApp stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $123.60, for a total transaction of $208,266.00.

NetApp Trading Up 1.0 %

Shares of NetApp stock opened at $123.45 on Thursday. NetApp, Inc. has a 1 year low of $77.30 and a 1 year high of $135.01. The company has a market capitalization of $25.28 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.11, a PEG ratio of 3.13 and a beta of 1.24. The company’s fifty day moving average is $121.56 and its two-hundred day moving average is $122.36. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 0.96.

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

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, October 23rd. Investors of record on Friday, October 4th were issued a dividend of $0.52 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, October 4th. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.68%. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio is currently 40.63%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On NetApp

Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Bessemer Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 46.1% in the 1st quarter. Bessemer Group Inc. now owns 16,720 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,754,000 after buying an additional 5,273 shares during the period. National Bank of Canada FI raised its position in NetApp by 221.9% in the first quarter. National Bank of Canada FI now owns 301,699 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $32,731,000 after acquiring an additional 207,968 shares in the last quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company boosted its position in shares of NetApp by 4.7% during the 2nd quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 186,777 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $24,057,000 after purchasing an additional 8,305 shares in the last quarter. Legal & General Group Plc boosted its holdings in NetApp by 3.5% during the second quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 2,405,363 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $309,811,000 after buying an additional 82,378 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Cetera Investment Advisers grew its position in NetApp by 132.1% during the first quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 28,230 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $2,963,000 after buying an additional 16,066 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have commented on NTAP. Barclays lifted their price objective on shares of NetApp from $116.00 to $119.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 29th. Citigroup lifted their price target on shares of NetApp from $120.00 to $130.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 15th. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of NetApp from $121.00 to $134.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Stifel Nicolaus boosted their price target on NetApp from $138.00 to $140.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on NetApp from $146.00 to $147.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $129.06.

About NetApp

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.