NetApp (NTAP) to Release Earnings on Thursday

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) is expected to be posting its quarterly earnings results after the market closes on Thursday, February 27th. Analysts expect NetApp to post earnings of $1.90 per share and revenue of $1.69 billion for the quarter. Individual that wish to register for the company’s earnings conference call can do so using this link.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.78 by $0.09. NetApp had a net margin of 17.78% and a return on equity of 123.63%. The firm had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.65 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.23 earnings per share. NetApp’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts expect NetApp to post $6 EPS for the current fiscal year and $6 EPS for the next fiscal year.

NetApp Trading Up 3.3 %

NTAP stock opened at $124.53 on Thursday. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $120.01 and a 200 day moving average price of $121.82. NetApp has a fifty-two week low of $83.80 and a fifty-two week high of $135.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a current ratio of 0.91. The firm has a market cap of $25.32 billion, a PE ratio of 22.89, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.83 and a beta of 1.23.

Insider Transactions at NetApp

In related news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 452 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $120.75, for a total value of $54,579.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 11,553 shares in the company, valued at $1,395,024.75. The trade was a 3.77 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $124.29, for a total value of $1,056,465.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 279,782 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,774,104.78. The trade was a 2.95 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 52,403 shares of company stock worth $6,248,501. 0.47% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms recently weighed in on NTAP. Citigroup raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Northland Securities raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $108.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a report on Friday, November 22nd. Bank of America upgraded NetApp from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and raised their price target for the stock from $121.00 to $128.00 in a research report on Wednesday. StockNews.com upgraded NetApp from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price target on NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Eleven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, NetApp currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $138.00.

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.