George Kurian Sells 8,500 Shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Stock

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $119.04, for a total value of $1,011,840.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 266,765 shares in the company, valued at $31,755,705.60. The trade was a 3.09 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink.

George Kurian also recently made the following trade(s):

• On Tuesday, January 21st, George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $123.03, for a total transaction of $1,045,755.00.
• On Monday, December 16th, George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $124.29, for a total transaction of $1,056,465.00.

NetApp Stock Performance

Shares of NTAP stock opened at $124.53 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39, a current ratio of 0.91 and a quick ratio of 0.84. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $120.05 and a 200-day moving average of $121.84. NetApp, Inc. has a one year low of $83.80 and a one year high of $135.45. The company has a market cap of $25.32 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.89, a P/E/G ratio of 2.86 and a beta of 1.23.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.09. NetApp had a net margin of 17.78% and a return on equity of 123.63%. The firm had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.65 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $1.23 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts forecast that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.89 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of NetApp

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in NetApp by 1.7% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 26,443,974 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $3,069,617,000 after purchasing an additional 429,343 shares during the period. State Street Corp grew its position in NetApp by 2.0% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 10,261,170 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,267,357,000 after buying an additional 199,384 shares during the period. Ameriprise Financial Inc. increased its holdings in NetApp by 14.5% during the fourth quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 7,024,456 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $815,402,000 after buying an additional 888,671 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of NetApp by 8.2% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 5,985,673 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $738,280,000 after purchasing an additional 453,324 shares during the period. Finally, Invesco Ltd. lifted its stake in NetApp by 20.4% in the fourth quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 3,123,228 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $362,544,000 after purchasing an additional 529,471 shares during the last quarter. 92.17% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of analysts have weighed in on the company. Citigroup increased their price target on NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Northland Securities lifted their target price on NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. TD Cowen increased their price target on NetApp from $145.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their price objective on shares of NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, Oppenheimer assumed coverage on shares of NetApp in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. They set a “market perform” rating on the stock. Eleven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, NetApp has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $138.00.

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.