NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Price Target Lowered to $115.00 at Barclays

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) had its price target lowered by Barclays from $132.00 to $115.00 in a research note published on Friday,Benzinga reports. Barclays currently has an equal weight rating on the data storage provider’s stock.

Several other equities analysts have also recently commented on NTAP. Morgan Stanley increased their target price on NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 17th. Northland Securities increased their target price on NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Susquehanna cut NetApp from a “positive” rating to a “neutral” rating and reduced their target price for the company from $155.00 to $130.00 in a research note on Monday, February 10th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their target price on NetApp from $160.00 to $153.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday. Finally, Wedbush reiterated a “neutral” rating and set a $110.00 target price (down from $120.00) on shares of NetApp in a research note on Friday. Twelve analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, NetApp currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $132.07.

NetApp Stock Down 15.4 %

Shares of NASDAQ:NTAP opened at $100.00 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $20.33 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.38, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.45 and a beta of 1.23. 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 company has a 50 day moving average of $119.85 and a two-hundred day moving average of $121.86. NetApp has a 52-week low of $88.49 and a 52-week high of $135.45.

NetApp Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, April 23rd. Stockholders of record on Friday, April 4th will be issued a dividend of $0.52 per share. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.08%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, April 4th. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 38.52%.

Insider Activity

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

Institutional Investors Weigh In On NetApp

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Private Advisor Group LLC raised its position in NetApp by 25.4% in the third quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC now owns 3,166 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $391,000 after acquiring an additional 642 shares in the last quarter. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. increased its stake in NetApp by 30.4% in the 3rd quarter. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. now owns 8,443 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $1,043,000 after purchasing an additional 1,966 shares in the last quarter. Pinnacle Associates Ltd. increased its stake in NetApp by 6.8% in the 3rd quarter. Pinnacle Associates Ltd. now owns 3,296 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $407,000 after purchasing an additional 209 shares in the last quarter. Farther Finance Advisors LLC increased its stake in NetApp by 25.9% in the 3rd quarter. Farther Finance Advisors LLC now owns 796 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $98,000 after purchasing an additional 164 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Conning Inc. increased its stake in NetApp by 234.9% in the 3rd quarter. Conning Inc. now owns 6,081 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $751,000 after purchasing an additional 4,265 shares in the last quarter. 92.17% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.