Fortem Financial Group LLC Purchases 1,067 Shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)

Fortem Financial Group LLC increased its position in shares of NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) by 11.5% in the fourth quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor owned 10,373 shares of the data storage provider’s stock after buying an additional 1,067 shares during the period. Fortem Financial Group LLC’s holdings in NetApp were worth $1,204,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. AQR Capital Management LLC increased its stake in NetApp by 59.6% in the 2nd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 1,643,146 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $211,637,000 after buying an additional 613,583 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its position in shares of NetApp by 8.2% in the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 5,985,673 shares of the data storage provider’s stock valued at $738,280,000 after acquiring an additional 453,324 shares during the last quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC raised 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 acquiring an additional 416,233 shares in the last quarter. APG Asset Management US Inc. bought a new stake in NetApp during the second quarter worth about $48,074,000. Finally, Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. boosted its position in NetApp by 38.5% during 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 purchasing an additional 342,415 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 92.17% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

NTAP has been the topic of a number of analyst reports. Bank of America upped their price objective on NetApp from $115.00 to $121.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Barclays increased their price target on shares of NetApp from $119.00 to $132.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. TD Cowen boosted their price objective on shares of NetApp from $145.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, November 22nd. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on shares of NetApp from $132.00 to $146.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 17th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus boosted their price target on NetApp from $140.00 to $145.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 22nd. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating and seven have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $139.20.

NetApp Stock Performance

NASDAQ NTAP traded up $0.49 during trading on Monday, reaching $117.43. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 690,645 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,051,025. NetApp, Inc. has a 12 month low of $83.62 and a 12 month high of $135.45. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $121.10 and a 200 day moving average price of $123.50. The firm has a market capitalization of $23.87 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.59, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.92 and a beta of 1.23. The company has a current ratio of 0.91, a quick ratio of 0.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.39.

NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 21st. The data storage provider reported $1.87 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 analyst estimates of $1.65 billion. NetApp had a return on equity of 123.63% and a net margin of 17.78%. The company’s revenue was up 6.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $1.23 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that NetApp, Inc. will post 5.83 EPS for the current fiscal year.

NetApp Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 22nd. Investors of record on Friday, January 3rd will be given a dividend of $0.52 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, January 3rd. This represents a $2.08 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.77%. NetApp’s dividend payout ratio is 38.24%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other NetApp news, President Cesar Cernuda sold 22,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, December 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $114.99, for a total transaction of $2,529,780.00. Following the completion of the sale, the president now directly owns 27,099 shares in the company, valued at $3,116,114.01. This represents a 44.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CAO Lorenzo Daniel De sold 326 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $117.44, for a total value of $38,285.44. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 51,864 shares of company stock worth $6,185,830 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 0.47% of the company’s stock.

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.