Needham & Company LLC Cuts Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Price Target to $130.00

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) had its price objective trimmed by Needham & Company LLC from $145.00 to $130.00 in a report published on Wednesday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a buy rating on the technology company’s stock.

Other equities analysts also recently issued reports about the company. Rosenblatt Securities upgraded Arista Networks from a “sell” rating to a “neutral” rating and raised their price target for the stock from $55.00 to $85.00 in a research note on Tuesday, April 29th. Morgan Stanley boosted their target price on shares of Arista Networks from $73.00 to $100.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 1st. Citigroup dropped their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $121.00 to $92.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, April 14th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their target price on shares of Arista Networks from $140.00 to $110.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, April 17th. Finally, Evercore ISI dropped their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $130.00 to $100.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, April 15th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and twelve have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Arista Networks currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $106.07.

Arista Networks Stock Performance

ANET stock opened at $86.15 on Wednesday. The business’s 50 day moving average price is $78.94 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $97.31. The company has a market capitalization of $108.17 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 38.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.10 and a beta of 1.38. Arista Networks has a fifty-two week low of $59.43 and a fifty-two week high of $133.58.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, May 6th. The technology company reported $0.65 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.59 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $2 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.97 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 40.72% and a return on equity of 29.91%. Arista Networks’s quarterly revenue was up 27.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.50 EPS. Sell-side analysts forecast that Arista Networks will post 2.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Arista Networks announced that its Board of Directors has approved a stock repurchase plan on Tuesday, May 6th that allows the company to buyback $1.50 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the technology company to buy up to 1.3% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Transactions at Arista Networks

In other Arista Networks news, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 138,351 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $93.88, for a total transaction of $12,988,391.88. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 92,641 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,697,137.08. The trade was a 59.89 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, SVP Kenneth Duda sold 80,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, March 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $84.85, for a total value of $6,788,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 12,976 shares in the company, valued at $1,101,013.60. This represents a 86.04 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 412,355 shares of company stock valued at $37,216,079 in the last quarter. 3.39% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 1.8% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 97,856,933 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $7,581,955,000 after buying an additional 1,771,982 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC grew its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 330.9% during the 4th quarter. FMR LLC now owns 57,648,129 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $6,371,848,000 after purchasing an additional 44,269,572 shares during the period. Cresset Asset Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Arista Networks by 277.5% during the 4th quarter. Cresset Asset Management LLC now owns 27,288,583 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $3,016,207,000 after purchasing an additional 20,059,303 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 311.6% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 24,165,355 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $2,665,829,000 after purchasing an additional 18,293,874 shares during the period. Finally, Alliancebernstein L.P. boosted its holdings in Arista Networks by 218.5% during the fourth quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 21,070,016 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $2,328,869,000 after buying an additional 14,454,822 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

Arista Networks Company Profile

Arista Networks, Inc engages in the development, marketing, and sale of data-driven, client to cloud networking solutions for data center, campus, and routing environments in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. Its cloud networking solutions consist of Extensible Operating System (EOS), a publish-subscribe state-sharing networking operating system offered in combination with a set of network applications.