Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund Sells 11,803 Shares of Pure Storage, Inc. $PSTG

Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund lessened its position in shares of Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG) by 15.2% during the 3rd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 65,604 shares of the technology company’s stock after selling 11,803 shares during the quarter. Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund’s holdings in Pure Storage were worth $5,498,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in PSTG. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its holdings in Pure Storage by 0.9% during the 2nd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 33,268,006 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $1,915,572,000 after purchasing an additional 308,738 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its position in shares of Pure Storage by 1.7% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,273,696 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $417,830,000 after buying an additional 123,320 shares during the period. William Blair Investment Management LLC grew its position in shares of Pure Storage by 112.9% during the 2nd quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC now owns 4,926,836 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $283,687,000 after buying an additional 2,612,300 shares during the period. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of Pure Storage during the second quarter worth approximately $225,203,000. Finally, Atreides Management LP acquired a new position in Pure Storage in the second quarter valued at approximately $204,552,000. 83.42% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have commented on PSTG. UBS Group lifted their target price on shares of Pure Storage from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Raymond James Financial raised their price target on Pure Storage from $88.00 to $99.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, October 17th. Oppenheimer started coverage on Pure Storage in a report on Monday, November 17th. They issued an “outperform” rating and a $120.00 price objective for the company. TD Cowen restated a “buy” rating on shares of Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, Barclays boosted their target price on Pure Storage from $70.00 to $77.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Twelve equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $95.26.

Pure Storage Price Performance

NYSE:PSTG opened at $73.93 on Friday. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $70.30 and its 200-day simple moving average is $76.58. Pure Storage, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $34.51 and a fifty-two week high of $100.59. The stock has a market capitalization of $24.41 billion, a PE ratio of 194.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 5.51 and a beta of 1.27.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, December 2nd. The technology company reported $0.58 EPS for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of $0.58. Pure Storage had a net margin of 3.74% and a return on equity of 10.60%. The firm had revenue of $964.45 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $955.60 million. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.50 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 16.1% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts expect that Pure Storage, Inc. will post 0.44 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Pure Storage news, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total transaction of $7,131,000.00. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of Pure Storage stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total value of $481,930.92. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 215,091 shares in the company, valued at $14,441,209.74. This represents a 3.23% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Company insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

About Pure Storage

Pure Storage, Inc (NYSE: PSTG) is a technology company that designs and sells data storage hardware and software for enterprise and cloud environments. The company is best known for its all-flash storage arrays that are engineered to deliver high performance, low latency and simplified management compared with traditional disk-based systems. Its product portfolio includes purpose-built arrays and software aimed at transactional databases, virtualized infrastructures, analytics and large-scale file/object workloads.

Key product and software offerings include the FlashArray family for block storage and FlashBlade for file and object workloads, together with Purity, the company’s storage operating environment.