Machina Capital S.A.S. Buys New Stake in Arista Networks, Inc. $ANET

Machina Capital S.A.S. purchased a new position in shares of Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm purchased 9,986 shares of the technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,455,000.

Several other large investors also recently modified their holdings of ANET. Global Trust Asset Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 33.0% during the third quarter. Global Trust Asset Management LLC now owns 19,273 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $2,808,000 after acquiring an additional 4,780 shares during the period. Rakuten Investment Management Inc. acquired a new stake in Arista Networks in the third quarter worth about $8,263,000. National Wealth Management Group LLC bought a new stake in Arista Networks during the 3rd quarter worth about $1,296,000. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in Arista Networks by 1.2% during the 2nd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 98,993,100 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $10,127,984,000 after purchasing an additional 1,136,167 shares during the period. Finally, Holocene Advisors LP bought a new position in shares of Arista Networks in the 2nd quarter valued at about $247,451,000. 82.47% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Arista Networks Stock Down 6.5%

Shares of ANET stock opened at $130.30 on Thursday. Arista Networks, Inc. has a 12-month low of $59.43 and a 12-month high of $164.94. The firm has a fifty day moving average of $131.64 and a 200-day moving average of $135.80. The firm has a market capitalization of $164.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 49.54, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.35 and a beta of 1.42.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, November 4th. The technology company reported $0.75 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.72 by $0.03. Arista Networks had a return on equity of 30.28% and a net margin of 39.73%.The firm had revenue of $2.31 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.26 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.40 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 27.5% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts expect that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 2.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, Director Charles H. Giancarlo sold 8,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $140.43, for a total transaction of $1,123,440.00. Following the sale, the director owned 9,784 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,373,967.12. This trade represents a 44.98% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 24,042 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 25th. The shares were sold at an average price of $124.55, for a total value of $2,994,431.10. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 9,917 shares in the company, valued at $1,235,162.35. This trade represents a 70.80% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold 216,464 shares of company stock valued at $27,553,548 over the last ninety days. 3.39% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on ANET shares. Rosenblatt Securities reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $140.00 price target on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Monday, November 24th. UBS Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $155.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Morgan Stanley dropped their target price on shares of Arista Networks from $171.00 to $159.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 17th. Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Monday, December 29th. Finally, Erste Group Bank downgraded Arista Networks from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, November 10th. Seventeen research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $164.44.

About Arista Networks

Arista Networks, Inc is a technology company that designs and sells cloud networking solutions for large-scale data centers and enterprise environments. The company is best known for its high-performance switching and routing platforms, which are used to build scalable, low-latency networks for cloud service providers, internet companies, financial services, telecommunications, and enterprise IT. Arista’s offerings emphasize programmability, automation and telemetry to support modern, software-driven network architectures.

Central to Arista’s product portfolio is its Extensible Operating System (EOS), a modular network operating system that provides consistent programmability, stateful control and advanced visibility across the company’s hardware platforms.