SBI Securities Co. Ltd. Buys Shares of 1,432 NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)

SBI Securities Co. Ltd. bought a new stake in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm bought 1,432 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $166,000.

Other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings Ltd. acquired a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 4th quarter valued at $26,000. Golden State Wealth Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 4th quarter valued at $35,000. True Wealth Design LLC boosted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 2,833.3% during the 3rd quarter. True Wealth Design LLC now owns 352 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $43,000 after acquiring an additional 340 shares in the last quarter. Capital Performance Advisors LLP acquired a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 3rd quarter valued at $44,000. Finally, Ashton Thomas Securities LLC acquired a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 3rd quarter valued at $51,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts recently weighed in on the company. Oppenheimer assumed coverage on NetApp in a report on Wednesday, November 13th. They set a “market perform” rating on the stock. Bank of America raised NetApp from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and raised their target price for the stock from $121.00 to $128.00 in a research report on Wednesday, February 19th. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Barclays lowered their target price on NetApp from $132.00 to $115.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, February 28th. Finally, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised NetApp to an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, February 19th. Twelve research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $129.07.

NetApp Stock Performance

Shares of NTAP opened at $91.86 on Friday. 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 stock has a 50-day moving average of $117.89 and a 200-day moving average of $120.89. The company has a market cap of $18.69 billion, a PE ratio of 16.89, a P/E/G ratio of 2.45 and a beta of 1.24. NetApp, Inc. has a one year low of $91.19 and a one year high of $135.45.

NetApp Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, April 23rd. Stockholders of record on Friday, April 4th will be paid a $0.52 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, April 4th. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.26%. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio is presently 38.52%.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $124.29, for a total value of $1,056,465.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 279,782 shares in the company, valued at $34,774,104.78. This trade represents a 2.95 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, President Cesar Cernuda sold 22,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $114.99, for a total value of $2,529,780.00. Following the completion of the sale, the president now owns 27,099 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,116,114.01. This represents a 44.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 60,903 shares of company stock worth $7,260,341 in the last three months. Company insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

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.