Daiwa Securities Group Inc. Has $5.23 Million Stock Holdings in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)

Daiwa Securities Group Inc. lifted its stake in NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) by 20.9% during the third quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The fund owned 42,302 shares of the data storage provider’s stock after buying an additional 7,318 shares during the period. Daiwa Securities Group Inc.’s holdings in NetApp were worth $5,225,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. AQR Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in NetApp by 59.6% in the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 1,643,146 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $211,637,000 after acquiring an additional 613,583 shares during the last quarter. TCW Group Inc. acquired a new stake in NetApp in the 2nd quarter valued at about $56,313,000. Acadian Asset Management LLC grew its holdings in 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 during the period. APG Asset Management US Inc. acquired a new position in NetApp during the second quarter worth approximately $48,074,000. Finally, Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. raised its stake in 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 buying an additional 342,415 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently commented on NTAP. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their target price on NetApp from $146.00 to $147.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 29th. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price objective on shares of NetApp from $135.00 to $140.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. Citigroup raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Wedbush reiterated a “neutral” rating and issued a $120.00 price target on shares of NetApp in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on shares of NetApp from $127.00 to $132.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have given a hold rating and six have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $134.00.

NetApp Stock Performance

NASDAQ:NTAP opened at $129.60 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a current ratio of 0.91. NetApp, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $77.56 and a fifty-two week high of $135.45. The company has a market cap of $26.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.82, a PEG ratio of 3.15 and a beta of 1.24. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $122.25 and a 200-day moving average price of $122.96.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.78 by $0.09. The firm had revenue of $1.66 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.65 billion. NetApp had a net margin of 17.78% and a return on equity of 123.63%. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 6.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $1.23 earnings per share. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.71 EPS for the current fiscal year.

NetApp Announces Dividend

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

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 1,685 shares of the company’s 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 transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, Director Thomas Michael Nevens sold 3,333 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $119.23, for a total transaction of $397,393.59. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 9,277 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,106,096.71. The trade was a 26.43 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 23,049 shares of company stock worth $2,807,851 over the last three months. Insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

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.