NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) PT Raised to $147.00 at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) had its price target upped by JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $146.00 to $147.00 in a research report report published on Thursday morning, Benzinga reports. They currently have a neutral rating on the data storage provider’s stock.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently issued reports on the company. Bank of America boosted their price objective on NetApp from $105.00 to $110.00 and gave the company an underperform rating in a research note on Thursday. Susquehanna reaffirmed a positive rating and set a $155.00 target price on shares of NetApp in a report on Monday, August 26th. Citigroup lifted their target price on NetApp from $120.00 to $130.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a report on Thursday, August 15th. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their target price on NetApp from $120.00 to $135.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a report on Wednesday, June 12th. Finally, Argus lifted their target price on NetApp from $130.00 to $140.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, June 5th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $127.67.

NetApp Trading Up 1.3 %

Shares of NetApp stock opened at $120.72 on Thursday. NetApp has a 52-week low of $70.82 and a 52-week high of $135.01. The stock’s 50-day simple moving average is $127.37 and its 200 day simple moving average is $113.94. The stock has a market capitalization of $24.72 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.02, a P/E/G ratio of 4.88 and a beta of 1.27. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a quick ratio of 1.15 and a current ratio of 0.96.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 28th. The data storage provider reported $1.56 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.45 by $0.11. NetApp had a return on equity of 121.41% and a net margin of 17.01%. The business had revenue of $1.54 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.53 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $0.84 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 7.6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts anticipate that NetApp will post 5.63 EPS for the current year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, October 23rd. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 4th will be issued a dividend of $0.52 per share. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.72%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 4th. NetApp’s payout ratio is 44.83%.

NetApp announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a stock buyback program on Thursday, May 30th that permits the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the data storage provider to buy up to 4% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other NetApp news, Director Thomas Michael Nevens sold 3,334 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, June 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $127.33, for a total value of $424,518.22. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 11,455 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,458,565.15. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. In other NetApp news, Director Thomas Michael Nevens sold 3,334 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, June 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $127.33, for a total value of $424,518.22. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 11,455 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,458,565.15. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CFO Michael J. Berry sold 7,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, June 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $127.24, for a total value of $954,300.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 193,369 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $24,604,271.56. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 41,786 shares of company stock valued at $5,395,146 over the last quarter. 0.37% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of NetApp

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Savant Capital LLC lifted its position in NetApp by 7.5% in the fourth quarter. Savant Capital LLC now owns 3,037 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $268,000 after purchasing an additional 211 shares during the last quarter. TD Asset Management Inc lifted its position in NetApp by 127.0% in the fourth quarter. TD Asset Management Inc now owns 1,698,277 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $149,720,000 after purchasing an additional 950,204 shares during the last quarter. Bessemer Group Inc. lifted its position in NetApp by 46.1% in the first quarter. Bessemer Group Inc. now owns 16,720 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $1,754,000 after purchasing an additional 5,273 shares during the last quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC bought a new stake in NetApp in the first quarter valued at approximately $473,000. Finally, Alpha DNA Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in NetApp in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $802,000. Institutional investors own 92.17% 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.