NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Plans $0.52 Quarterly Dividend

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, November 21st,RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, January 3rd will be paid a dividend of 0.52 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, January 22nd. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.70%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, January 3rd.

NetApp has raised its dividend by an average of 1.4% per year over the last three years. NetApp has a payout ratio of 27.4% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect NetApp to earn $6.18 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.08 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 33.7%.

NetApp Trading Down 3.4 %

NASDAQ:NTAP opened at $122.34 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 0.96, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34. NetApp has a 1-year low of $77.56 and a 1-year high of $135.45. The firm has a market capitalization of $25.05 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.49, a PEG ratio of 3.26 and a beta of 1.24. The business’s 50-day moving average price is $121.87 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $122.49.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.78 by $0.09. The business had revenue of $1.66 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.65 billion. NetApp had a net margin of 17.78% and a return on equity of 119.68%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 6.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $1.23 EPS. On average, equities analysts expect that NetApp will post 5.71 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity at NetApp

In other news, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 1,685 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $123.60, for a total value of $208,266.00. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CEO George Kurian sold 8,500 shares of NetApp stock in a transaction on Monday, November 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $118.00, for a total transaction of $1,003,000.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 288,282 shares in the company, valued at approximately $34,017,276. This trade represents a 2.86 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 23,049 shares of company stock valued at $2,807,851 in the last quarter. Insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on NTAP shares. Stifel Nicolaus increased their price objective on shares of NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday. Citigroup lifted their target price on NetApp from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday. Wells Fargo & Company boosted 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. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price on NetApp from $146.00 to $147.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, August 29th. Finally, Wedbush reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $120.00 price target on shares of NetApp in a research report on Friday. 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. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $134.00.

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.