National Pension Service Grows Position in Pure Storage, Inc. $PSTG

National Pension Service increased its position in Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG) by 65.5% during the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 75,393 shares of the technology company’s stock after purchasing an additional 29,834 shares during the period. National Pension Service’s holdings in Pure Storage were worth $6,319,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Winnow Wealth LLC purchased a new position in Pure Storage during the third quarter valued at $26,000. Arizona State Retirement System increased its stake in shares of Pure Storage by 1.5% in the 3rd quarter. Arizona State Retirement System now owns 91,924 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $7,704,000 after acquiring an additional 1,398 shares in the last quarter. Archer Investment Corp lifted its position in Pure Storage by 15.1% during the 3rd quarter. Archer Investment Corp now owns 2,819 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $236,000 after acquiring an additional 369 shares during the period. New York State Common Retirement Fund boosted its stake in Pure Storage by 3.9% during the third quarter. New York State Common Retirement Fund now owns 168,754 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $14,143,000 after acquiring an additional 6,300 shares in the last quarter. Finally, TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. boosted its stake in Pure Storage by 3,374.8% during the third quarter. TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. now owns 3,718 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $319,000 after acquiring an additional 3,611 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 83.42% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts have weighed in on PSTG shares. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $100.00 target price on shares of Pure Storage in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Oppenheimer assumed coverage on Pure Storage in a research report on Monday, November 17th. They set an “outperform” rating and a $120.00 price objective for the company. Wedbush boosted their target price on Pure Storage from $90.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. UBS Group raised their price target on Pure Storage from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the company a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price target on Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Twelve equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Pure Storage currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $95.26.

Pure Storage Price Performance

PSTG stock opened at $68.40 on Wednesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $22.58 billion, a P/E ratio of 180.01, a P/E/G ratio of 5.47 and a beta of 1.27. Pure Storage, Inc. has a 1-year low of $34.51 and a 1-year high of $100.59. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $71.98 and a 200-day moving average price of $76.05.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, September 9th. The technology company reported $0.44 EPS for the quarter. Pure Storage had a return on equity of 10.60% and a net margin of 3.74%.The company had revenue of $763.77 million during the quarter. As a group, analysts anticipate that Pure Storage, Inc. will post 0.44 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Pure Storage news, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of Pure Storage stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total value of $7,131,000.00. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total transaction of $481,930.92. Following the sale, the insider owned 215,091 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,441,209.74. This represents a 3.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders sold 207,178 shares of company stock valued at $16,771,931 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

Pure Storage Company Profile

Pure Storage, Inc (NYSE: PSTG) is a technology company that designs and sells data storage hardware and software for enterprise and cloud environments. The company is best known for its all-flash storage arrays that are engineered to deliver high performance, low latency and simplified management compared with traditional disk-based systems. Its product portfolio includes purpose-built arrays and software aimed at transactional databases, virtualized infrastructures, analytics and large-scale file/object workloads.

Key product and software offerings include the FlashArray family for block storage and FlashBlade for file and object workloads, together with Purity, the company’s storage operating environment.