Bank of America Forecasts Strong Price Appreciation for NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Stock

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) had its price objective hoisted by investment analysts at Bank of America from $115.00 to $121.00 in a research report issued to clients and investors on Friday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has an “underperform” rating on the data storage provider’s stock. Bank of America‘s price target would indicate a potential downside of 1.10% from the stock’s previous close.

Several other brokerages also recently weighed in on NTAP. Barclays raised their price target on NetApp from $116.00 to $119.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Susquehanna restated a “positive” rating and set a $155.00 price objective on shares of NetApp in a research note on Monday, August 26th. Northland Securities upped their target price on shares of NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday. Stifel Nicolaus increased their price target on shares of NetApp from $138.00 to $140.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Finally, UBS Group boosted their price objective on shares of NetApp from $121.00 to $134.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $134.00.

NetApp Trading Down 3.4 %

NASDAQ:NTAP opened at $122.34 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $25.05 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.49, a PEG ratio of 3.26 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a current ratio of 0.96 and a quick ratio of 0.91. NetApp has a one year low of $77.56 and a one year high of $135.45. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $121.87 and its 200 day simple moving average is $122.59.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.78 by $0.09. NetApp had a return on equity of 119.68% and a net margin of 17.78%. The firm had revenue of $1.66 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.23 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts forecast that NetApp will post 5.71 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at NetApp

In other NetApp news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 705 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $126.20, for a total transaction of $88,971.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president now owns 11,694 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,475,782.80. This trade represents a 5.69 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 1,685 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $123.60, for a total transaction of $208,266.00. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 23,049 shares of company stock worth $2,807,851. 0.47% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of NetApp

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. AQR Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in NetApp by 59.6% in the 2nd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 1,643,146 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $211,637,000 after buying an additional 613,583 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of NetApp by 8.2% in the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 5,985,673 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $738,280,000 after acquiring an additional 453,324 shares in the last quarter. TCW Group Inc. bought a new position in shares of NetApp in the second quarter worth about $56,313,000. Acadian Asset Management LLC grew its position in shares of NetApp by 17.5% during the second quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC now owns 2,791,599 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $359,517,000 after purchasing an additional 416,233 shares in the last quarter. Finally, APG Asset Management US Inc. bought a new stake in NetApp during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $48,074,000. 92.17% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.