NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Given New $130.00 Price Target at Wells Fargo & Company

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) had its price target trimmed by Wells Fargo & Company from $140.00 to $130.00 in a report issued on Thursday morning,Benzinga reports. They currently have an equal weight rating on the data storage provider’s stock.

A number of other analysts have also recently issued reports on NTAP. Bank of America upgraded NetApp from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and boosted their price objective for the company from $121.00 to $128.00 in a research report on Wednesday. Barclays boosted their price objective on NetApp from $119.00 to $132.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Stifel Nicolaus boosted their price objective on NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Northland Securities upped their price target on NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, Oppenheimer began coverage on NetApp in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. They issued a “market perform” rating on the stock. Eleven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $137.33.

NetApp Stock Performance

NTAP opened at $124.55 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $25.32 billion, a PE ratio of 22.90, a P/E/G ratio of 2.96 and a beta of 1.23. 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 1 year low of $83.80 and a 1 year high of $135.45. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $120.05 and its 200-day simple moving average is $121.84.

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

Insiders Place Their Bets

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

Hedge Funds Weigh In On NetApp

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Mackenzie Financial Corp lifted its stake in shares of NetApp by 373.4% during the fourth quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 243,504 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $28,266,000 after acquiring an additional 192,062 shares during the period. Toronto Dominion Bank lifted its stake in NetApp by 36.3% in the fourth quarter. Toronto Dominion Bank now owns 125,740 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $14,594,000 after buying an additional 33,500 shares during the period. Vise Technologies Inc. acquired a new position in NetApp in the fourth quarter valued at about $249,000. Focus Partners Advisor Solutions LLC acquired a new position in NetApp in the fourth quarter valued at about $251,000. Finally, PharVision Advisers LLC acquired a new position in NetApp in the fourth quarter valued at about $403,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds 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.