Insider Selling: NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) EVP Sells $52,672.29 in Stock

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 451 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, January 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $116.79, for a total value of $52,672.29. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 12,005 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,402,063.95. This represents a 3.62 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website.

NetApp Stock Up 0.5 %

Shares of NASDAQ:NTAP opened at $119.98 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $24.39 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.06, a PEG ratio of 2.76 and a beta of 1.23. NetApp, Inc. has a 52-week low of $83.80 and a 52-week high of $135.45. The business’s 50 day simple moving average is $120.98 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $122.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a current ratio of 0.91.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.09. The business had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.65 billion. NetApp had a net margin of 17.78% and a return on equity of 123.63%. NetApp’s revenue was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $1.23 EPS. As a group, research analysts forecast that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.88 EPS for the current fiscal year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 22nd. Stockholders of record on Friday, January 3rd will be given a dividend of $0.52 per share. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.73%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, January 3rd. NetApp’s payout ratio is presently 38.24%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On NetApp

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in NTAP. Hollencrest Capital Management bought a new stake in NetApp during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $26,000. Northwest Investment Counselors LLC purchased a new position in shares of NetApp during the third quarter valued at approximately $27,000. Redwood Wealth Management Group LLC bought a new stake in NetApp during the second quarter worth $32,000. Hershey Financial Advisers LLC purchased a new stake in NetApp in the 2nd quarter valued at $45,000. Finally, True Wealth Design LLC raised its position in NetApp by 2,833.3% in the 3rd quarter. True Wealth Design LLC now owns 352 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $43,000 after buying an additional 340 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities research analysts have recently weighed in on NTAP shares. Wells Fargo & Company increased their price target on NetApp from $135.00 to $140.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Oppenheimer assumed coverage on shares of NetApp in a report on Wednesday, November 13th. They set a “market perform” rating for the company. Citigroup upped their price objective on shares of NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Morgan Stanley lifted their target price on shares of NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 17th. Finally, 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 research report on Friday, November 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have assigned a hold rating and seven have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $139.20.

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.