Freedom Investment Management Inc. Takes $205,000 Position in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)

Freedom Investment Management Inc. bought a new position in shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) in the third quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor bought 1,656 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $205,000.

Several other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. AQR Capital Management LLC increased its position in shares of NetApp by 59.6% during the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 1,643,146 shares of the data storage provider’s stock worth $211,637,000 after acquiring an additional 613,583 shares in the last quarter. TCW Group Inc. bought a new position in NetApp during the 2nd quarter worth about $56,313,000. Acadian Asset Management LLC raised its stake in shares of NetApp by 17.5% in the 2nd quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC now owns 2,791,599 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $359,517,000 after purchasing an additional 416,233 shares during the period. APG Asset Management US Inc. bought a new stake in shares of NetApp in the second quarter valued at about $48,074,000. Finally, Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. lifted its holdings in shares of NetApp by 38.5% in the third quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 1,232,852 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $152,270,000 after purchasing an additional 342,415 shares in the last quarter. 92.17% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms have commented on NTAP. Citigroup boosted their target price on NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of NetApp from $121.00 to $134.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Bank of America raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $115.00 to $121.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Northland Securities boosted their price target on shares of NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, Loop Capital upgraded NetApp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the company from $121.00 to $150.00 in a report on Tuesday, September 3rd. One 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 MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $137.40.

NetApp Trading Up 0.2 %

NTAP stock opened at $122.64 on Monday. NetApp, Inc. has a one year low of $83.62 and a one year high of $135.45. The stock has a market cap of $24.93 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.54, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $122.37 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $123.24. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39, a current ratio of 0.91 and a quick ratio of 0.84.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.09. NetApp had a return on equity of 123.63% and a net margin of 17.78%. The business had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.23 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts anticipate that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.83 EPS for the current year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 22nd. Investors of record on Friday, January 3rd will be paid a $0.52 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, January 3rd. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.70%. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 38.24%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $118.00, for a total transaction of $1,003,000.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 288,282 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,017,276. This represents a 2.86 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 705 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction on Thursday, October 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $126.20, for a total value of $88,971.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 11,694 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,475,782.80. This represents a 5.69 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 23,049 shares of company stock valued at $2,807,851. 0.47% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

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.