Insider Selling: NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Director Sells 5,940 Shares

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Director Thomas Nevens sold 5,940 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, September 11th. The stock was sold at an average price of $195.21, for a total transaction of $1,159,547.40. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 7,747 shares in the company, valued at $1,512,291.87. The trade was a 43.40% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website.

NetApp Stock Performance

NetApp stock traded down $11.01 during mid-day trading on Monday, reaching $188.27. 2,008,890 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,700,920. NetApp, Inc. has a twelve month low of $93.69 and a twelve month high of $209.06. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.30, a quick ratio of 1.16 and a current ratio of 1.24. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $182.09 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $144.20. The firm has a market cap of $36.98 billion, a PE ratio of 26.55, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.14 and a beta of 1.44.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, September 2nd. The data storage provider reported $2.58 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.12 by $0.46. NetApp had a net margin of 19.18% and a return on equity of 119.13%. The company had revenue of $2.02 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.84 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $1.15 EPS. NetApp’s revenue was up 29.9% compared to the same quarter last year. NetApp has set its FY 2027 guidance at 9.730-10.030 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 2.540-2.640 EPS. Equities analysts predict that NetApp, Inc. will post 8.32 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, October 28th. Investors of record on Friday, October 9th will be paid a $0.52 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 9th. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.1%. NetApp’s payout ratio is 29.34%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

NTAP has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on NetApp from $173.00 to $191.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, September 3rd. Argus set a $225.00 price target on shares of NetApp in a report on Friday. Wedbush boosted their price objective on shares of NetApp from $150.00 to $170.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, September 3rd. Northland Securities upped their target price on shares of NetApp from $171.00 to $187.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, September 3rd. Finally, Susquehanna increased their target price on shares of NetApp from $185.00 to $195.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, September 3rd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have assigned a Buy rating and ten have assigned a Hold rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $193.86.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On NetApp

Hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. California State Teachers Retirement System grew its position in shares of NetApp by 15,681.5% in the second quarter. California State Teachers Retirement System now owns 48,620,175 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $7,524,458,000 after purchasing an additional 48,312,092 shares during the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new position in shares of NetApp during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $2,925,168,000. Primecap Management Co. CA acquired a new position in shares of NetApp during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $1,395,423,000. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC lifted its stake in NetApp by 9.4% in the 2nd quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 4,444,057 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $687,762,000 after buying an additional 383,701 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank purchased a new stake in NetApp in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $458,060,000. 92.17% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

About NetApp

NetApp, Inc (NASDAQ: NTAP) is a data infrastructure and cloud storage company that helps organizations manage, protect and access data across on-premises environments, private clouds and public clouds. Its offerings are designed to support enterprise workloads such as databases, business applications, artificial intelligence and virtualized computing.

The company’s portfolio includes all-flash and hybrid storage systems, cloud storage services, data management software and infrastructure-as-a-service solutions.