The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Technology company by 5.58% to 27.06 million shares with purchase of 1.43 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 12.55% valued currently at $1.75 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.62 million to 12.49 million shares. And Geode Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 1.58% or 71415.0 shares – to 4.6 million shares.
With over 2.02 million NetApp Inc. (NTAP) shares trading Monday and a closing price of $61.35 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $124.12 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -15.32% and its price on 03/13/23 lost nearly -1.40%. Currently, there are 216.00M common shares owned by the public and among those 213.31M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 91 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 44 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 318,021 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 47 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 232,414 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in NetApp Inc. are Vanguard PRIMECAP Fund, Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, and Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund. Vanguard PRIMECAP Fund owns 8.61 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $555.54 million. The company sold 16550.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.99% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index bought 42399.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 6.65 million shares valued at over $429.56 million and representing 3.09% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund bought 8130.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 5.06 million shares at a value of $326.79 million. Vanguard Mid Cap Index Fund now owns shares totaling to 2.35% of the shares outstanding.
Shares of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) opened at $62.01, down -$0.21 from a prior closing price of $62.22. However, the script later moved the day high at 62.40, down -1.40%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -6.14% and -4.02% over the past three months. NTAP shares are trading 2.15% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -25.74% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $58.08 and touched a high of $90.20 over the same period. NTAP has an average intraday trading volume of 1.75 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by -6.61%, -5.72%, and -8.86% respectively.
Institutional ownership of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) shares accounts for 91.40% of the company’s 216.00M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 58.27%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 6.38% and 34.31% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $13.37B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.18. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 10.59, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $5.79. The company has a PEG of 1.41 and a Quick Ratio of 1.30 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 2.17. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.33% over the week and 2.26% over the month.
Analysts forecast that NetApp Inc. (NTAP) will achieve an EPS of $1.31 for the current quarter, $1.43 for the next quarter and $5.76 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $1.29 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $1.35. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.44 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 26.70%, and 4.13% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 7.53% over the next five years, compared to 19.00% over the past 5-year period.
Barclays coverage for the NetApp Inc. (NTAP) stock in a research note released on January 10, 2023 offered a Equal Weight rating with a price target of $71. JP Morgan was of a view on December 20, 2022 that the stock is Neutral, while Morgan Stanley gave the stock Underweight rating on December 13, 2022, issuing a price target of $66- $58. Loop Capital on their part issued Hold rating on December 05, 2022.
