George Kurian Sells 8,500 Shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Stock

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP - Get Free Report) CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the business's stock in a transaction on Monday, April 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $103.16, for a total transaction of $876,860.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 252,702 shares in the company, valued at approximately $26,068,738.32. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website.

George Kurian also recently made the following trade(s):

• On Tuesday, March 19th, George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $101.44, for a total transaction of $862,240.00.

NetApp Stock Performance

NASDAQ NTAP traded down $1.63 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $100.91. 1,110,794 shares of the company's stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 1,895,415. The stock has a market capitalization of $20.83 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.30, a PEG ratio of 2.26 and a beta of 1.28. NetApp, Inc. has a 12-month low of $60.92 and a 12-month high of $112.48. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.00, a quick ratio of 1.11 and a current ratio of 1.15. The business has a 50 day moving average of $98.33 and a 200-day moving average of $88.10.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP - Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 29th. The data storage provider reported $1.94 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.69 by $0.25. The business had revenue of $1.61 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.59 billion. NetApp had a net margin of 15.21% and a return on equity of 109.49%. The company's revenue was up 5.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $1.02 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.16 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, April 24th. Shareholders of record on Friday, April 5th will be issued a dividend of $0.50 per share. This represents a $2.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.98%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 4th. NetApp's dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 45.45%.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On NetApp

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in NTAP. Rise Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp in the first quarter worth about $27,000. ORG Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 14,650.0% in the fourth quarter. ORG Partners LLC now owns 295 shares of the data storage provider's stock worth $26,000 after buying an additional 293 shares in the last quarter. First Horizon Advisors Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 58.7% in the fourth quarter. First Horizon Advisors Inc. now owns 311 shares of the data storage provider's stock worth $27,000 after buying an additional 115 shares in the last quarter. UMB Bank n.a. lifted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 82.9% in the fourth quarter. UMB Bank n.a. now owns 331 shares of the data storage provider's stock worth $29,000 after buying an additional 150 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Larson Financial Group LLC purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp in the third quarter worth about $27,000. 92.17% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have commented on NTAP. Citigroup boosted their price target on shares of NetApp from $90.00 to $110.00 and gave the company a "neutral" rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 5th. Raymond James restated a "market perform" rating on shares of NetApp in a research note on Tuesday, January 16th. Wedbush boosted their price target on shares of NetApp from $85.00 to $100.00 and gave the company a "neutral" rating in a research note on Friday, March 1st. Evercore ISI upped their target price on shares of NetApp from $95.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock an "in-line" rating in a research note on Friday, March 1st. Finally, Argus upgraded shares of NetApp from a "hold" rating to a "buy" rating and set a $130.00 target price for the company in a research note on Monday, March 4th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company's stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of "Hold" and an average price target of $97.94.

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.

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