NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.52

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, February 27th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, April 4th will be paid a dividend of 0.52 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, April 23rd. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.76%.

NetApp has raised its dividend by an average of 1.3% annually over the last three years. NetApp has a dividend payout ratio of 24.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect NetApp to earn $6.43 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.08 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 32.3%.

NetApp Stock Performance

NASDAQ:NTAP opened at $118.22 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 0.91, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39. The stock has a market capitalization of $24.03 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.73, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.45 and a beta of 1.23. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $120.22 and a 200-day moving average of $122.02. NetApp has a 1 year low of $86.43 and a 1 year high of $135.45.

Insider Buying and Selling at NetApp

In other news, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $124.29, for a total transaction of $1,056,465.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 279,782 shares in the company, valued at $34,774,104.78. The trade was a 2.95 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 452 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $120.75, for a total value of $54,579.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 11,553 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,395,024.75. The trade was a 3.77 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 60,903 shares of company stock valued at $7,260,341. Company insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have weighed in on NTAP. Citigroup boosted their target price on shares of NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Oppenheimer began coverage on NetApp in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. They set a “market perform” rating for the company. Northland Securities raised their price target on NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Barclays boosted their price objective on NetApp from $119.00 to $132.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, Susquehanna downgraded shares of NetApp from a “positive” rating to a “neutral” rating and dropped their price target for the stock from $155.00 to $130.00 in a research note on Monday, February 10th. Eleven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, NetApp currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $135.33.

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.