NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) Releases Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.09 EPS

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.78 by $0.09, RTT News reports. The business had revenue of $1.66 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. NetApp had a return on equity of 119.68% and a net margin of 17.78%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $1.23 earnings per share.

NetApp Trading Down 3.4 %

Shares of NTAP opened at $122.34 on Friday. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $121.87 and a two-hundred day moving average of $122.49. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 0.96. The company has a market capitalization of $25.05 billion, a PE ratio of 22.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.26 and a beta of 1.24. NetApp has a fifty-two week low of $77.56 and a fifty-two week high of $135.45.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

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

Insider Buying and Selling at NetApp

In other news, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 1,685 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $123.60, for a total transaction of $208,266.00. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, October 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $126.11, for a total transaction of $1,071,935.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 292,778 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $36,922,233.58. This represents a 2.82 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 23,049 shares of company stock worth $2,807,851. Insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several analysts have recently issued reports on NTAP shares. Oppenheimer began coverage on NetApp in a research note on Wednesday, November 13th. They issued a “market perform” rating on the stock. Citigroup raised their price target on NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday. Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target on NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday. Bank of America raised their price target on NetApp from $115.00 to $121.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research note on Friday. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price target on NetApp from $146.00 to $147.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 29th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have given a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $134.00.

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.