Citigroup Issues Positive Forecast for NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Stock Price

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) had its price objective upped by Citigroup from $130.00 to $135.00 in a report published on Friday,Benzinga reports. They currently have a neutral rating on the data storage provider’s stock.

Several other equities analysts have also recently weighed in on NTAP. UBS Group lifted their price objective on NetApp from $121.00 to $134.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their price objective on NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. Northland Securities upped their price objective on NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday. Bank of America lifted their target price on NetApp from $115.00 to $121.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Friday. Finally, Loop Capital raised shares of NetApp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their target price for the stock from $121.00 to $150.00 in a report on Tuesday, September 3rd. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have issued a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, NetApp presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $134.00.

NetApp Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ NTAP opened at $122.34 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $25.05 billion, a PE ratio of 22.49, a P/E/G ratio of 3.26 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a current ratio of 0.96 and a quick ratio of 0.91. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $121.87 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $122.69. NetApp has a fifty-two week low of $77.56 and a fifty-two week high of $135.45.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.09. The firm had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. NetApp had a return on equity of 119.68% and a net margin of 17.78%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $1.23 EPS. As a group, equities analysts predict that NetApp will post 5.71 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, January 22nd. Stockholders of record on Friday, January 3rd will be issued a dividend of $0.52 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, January 3rd. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.70%. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 38.24%.

Insider Activity at NetApp

In related news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 705 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $126.20, for a total value of $88,971.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 11,694 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,475,782.80. The trade was a 5.69 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $126.11, for a total value of $1,071,935.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 292,778 shares in the company, valued at $36,922,233.58. The trade was a 2.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 23,049 shares of company stock worth $2,807,851 over the last three months. Company insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of NetApp

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Bessemer Group Inc. raised its stake in NetApp by 46.1% during the first quarter. Bessemer Group Inc. now owns 16,720 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $1,754,000 after buying an additional 5,273 shares during the last quarter. CreativeOne Wealth LLC raised its stake in NetApp by 45.6% during the first quarter. CreativeOne Wealth LLC now owns 5,164 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $543,000 after buying an additional 1,618 shares during the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD raised its stake in NetApp by 39.4% during the first quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 393,975 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $41,357,000 after buying an additional 111,439 shares during the last quarter. SVB Wealth LLC raised its stake in NetApp by 5.2% during the first quarter. SVB Wealth LLC now owns 2,892 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $304,000 after buying an additional 142 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Paloma Partners Management Co bought a new position in NetApp during the first quarter worth $627,000. 92.17% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

About NetApp

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.