Hancock Whitney Corp Purchases New Position in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)

Hancock Whitney Corp bought a new position in shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) during the 3rd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm bought 7,190 shares of the data storage provider’s stock, valued at approximately $888,000.

Several other large investors have also modified their holdings of NTAP. Hollencrest Capital Management bought a new position in NetApp in the second quarter worth approximately $26,000. Northwest Investment Counselors LLC bought a new position in shares of NetApp in the 3rd quarter worth $27,000. New Covenant Trust Company N.A. purchased a new stake in shares of NetApp during the 1st quarter worth $28,000. Redwood Wealth Management Group LLC bought a new stake in NetApp during the second quarter valued at about $32,000. Finally, Robbins Farley purchased a new position in NetApp in the second quarter valued at about $44,000. Institutional investors own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

NTAP has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. Oppenheimer began coverage on shares of NetApp in a report on Wednesday, November 13th. They issued a “market perform” rating on the stock. Morgan Stanley upped their price target on NetApp from $127.00 to $132.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on NetApp from $146.00 to $147.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their price target on NetApp from $135.00 to $140.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, UBS Group boosted their target price on shares of NetApp from $121.00 to $134.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have given a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $134.00.

NetApp Trading Up 2.7 %

NetApp stock opened at $129.60 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 0.91, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39. The firm has a market cap of $26.54 billion, a PE ratio of 23.82, a P/E/G ratio of 3.04 and a beta of 1.24. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $122.25 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $122.96. NetApp, Inc. has a 12 month low of $77.56 and a 12 month high of $135.45.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 company had revenue of $1.66 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.65 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned $1.23 earnings per share. NetApp’s quarterly revenue was up 6.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts anticipate that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.79 earnings per share for the current year.

NetApp Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 22nd. Shareholders of record on Friday, January 3rd will be issued a dividend of $0.52 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, January 3rd. This represents a $2.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.60%. NetApp’s payout ratio is currently 38.24%.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Elizabeth M. O’callahan sold 705 shares of the stock in a transaction dated 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 sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 11,694 shares in the company, valued at $1,475,782.80. This represents a 5.69 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 326 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.44, for a total transaction of $38,285.44. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 23,049 shares of company stock worth $2,807,851 over the last quarter. 0.47% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

NetApp 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.