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

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) announced a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, August 28th, RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 4th will be paid a dividend of 0.52 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, October 23rd. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.69%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 4th.

NetApp has increased its dividend payment by an average of 1.4% per year over the last three years. NetApp has a payout ratio of 27.4% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect NetApp to earn $6.19 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 33.6%.

NetApp Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ NTAP opened at $123.02 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 0.96, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $122.87 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $117.75. NetApp has a 1-year low of $70.82 and a 1-year high of $135.01. The firm has a market cap of $25.32 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.51, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.61 and a beta of 1.23.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 28th. The data storage provider reported $1.56 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.45 by $0.11. The company had revenue of $1.54 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.53 billion. NetApp had a return on equity of 121.41% and a net margin of 17.01%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.84 EPS. Analysts anticipate that NetApp will post 5.71 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

NTAP has been the subject of several analyst reports. Evercore ISI raised their price objective on shares of NetApp from $120.00 to $130.00 and gave the stock an “in-line” rating in a report on Monday, August 12th. Argus lifted their price target on NetApp from $130.00 to $140.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, June 5th. Loop Capital raised NetApp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price objective for the stock from $121.00 to $150.00 in a report on Tuesday, September 3rd. Wedbush reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $120.00 target price on shares of NetApp in a report on Monday, August 26th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on NetApp from $120.00 to $135.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, June 12th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $129.06.

Insider Buying and Selling at NetApp

In other NetApp news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 452 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, July 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $133.07, for a total transaction of $60,147.64. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now owns 11,886 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,581,670.02. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $130.36, for a total value of $1,108,060.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 314,274 shares in the company, valued at approximately $40,968,758.64. The sale 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 company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, July 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $133.07, for a total transaction of $60,147.64. Following the sale, the executive vice president now owns 11,886 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,581,670.02. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 10,637 shares of company stock worth $1,376,474 over the last three months. 0.37% of the stock is owned by insiders.

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.