Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings Ltd. Takes Position in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)

Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings Ltd. acquired a new stake in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) in the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm acquired 226 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $26,000.

Several other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of NTAP. Intech Investment Management LLC boosted its stake in NetApp by 8.9% during the third quarter. Intech Investment Management LLC now owns 302,010 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $37,301,000 after buying an additional 24,651 shares during the period. Daiwa Securities Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of NetApp by 20.9% during the third quarter. Daiwa Securities Group Inc. now owns 42,302 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $5,225,000 after purchasing an additional 7,318 shares in the last quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. raised its stake in NetApp by 9.2% in the fourth quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 1,346,212 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $156,268,000 after purchasing an additional 113,360 shares in the last quarter. Hilton Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in NetApp during the third quarter valued at approximately $4,059,000. Finally, Orion Portfolio Solutions LLC grew its stake in NetApp by 232.2% in the 3rd quarter. Orion Portfolio Solutions LLC now owns 6,731 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $831,000 after buying an additional 4,705 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have recently issued reports on NTAP shares. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised shares of NetApp from a “neutral” rating to an “overweight” rating and set a $160.00 price objective for the company in a report on Monday, December 16th. Stifel Nicolaus upped their price objective on NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. TD Cowen raised their price objective on NetApp from $145.00 to $160.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Morgan Stanley upped their target price on NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 17th. Finally, StockNews.com raised shares of NetApp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, January 28th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have issued a hold rating and seven have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $139.20.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 326 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $117.44, for a total value of $38,285.44. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, President Cesar Cernuda sold 22,000 shares of the firm’s 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 sale, the president now owns 27,099 shares in the company, valued at $3,116,114.01. This represents a 44.81 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 64,110 shares of company stock worth $7,632,601 in the last three months. Insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

NetApp Price Performance

Shares of NTAP stock opened at $122.91 on Friday. 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, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $83.80 and a fifty-two week high of $135.45. The firm has a market cap of $24.99 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.59, a P/E/G ratio of 2.90 and a beta of 1.23. The business’s 50 day moving average price is $120.98 and its 200-day moving average price is $122.15.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last announced 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. NetApp had a return on equity of 123.63% and a net margin of 17.78%. The business had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $1.23 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.89 earnings per share for the current year.

NetApp Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, January 22nd. Investors of record on Friday, January 3rd were given a dividend of $0.52 per share. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.69%. The ex-dividend date was Friday, January 3rd. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 38.24%.

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.