Needham & Company LLC Reiterates Buy Rating for Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET)

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reissued by analysts at Needham & Company LLC in a report released on Wednesday,Benzinga reports. They presently have a $145.00 price target on the technology company’s stock. Needham & Company LLC’s price objective would indicate a potential upside of 40.14% from the stock’s previous close.

ANET has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Evercore ISI upped their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $110.00 to $130.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, January 17th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Arista Networks from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, December 12th. Rosenblatt Securities restated a “sell” rating and set a $80.00 price target on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Tuesday. The Goldman Sachs Group upped their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $120.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, January 17th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $97.50 to $115.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and twelve have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Arista Networks has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $113.79.

Arista Networks Price Performance

Arista Networks stock opened at $103.47 on Wednesday. The stock has a market cap of $130.35 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 46.61, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.98 and a beta of 1.09. Arista Networks has a 1 year low of $60.08 and a 1 year high of $133.57. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $114.01 and a two-hundred day moving average of $101.55.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, February 18th. The technology company reported $0.59 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.57 by $0.02. Arista Networks had a net margin of 40.72% and a return on equity of 31.22%. The firm had revenue of $1.93 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.90 billion. Research analysts expect that Arista Networks will post 2.18 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity at Arista Networks

In related news, Director Charles H. Giancarlo sold 2,000 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $412.65, for a total value of $825,300.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 42,946 shares in the company, valued at $17,721,666.90. The trade was a 4.45 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, SVP Kenneth Duda sold 80,000 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, December 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $108.29, for a total transaction of $8,663,200.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 12,976 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,405,171.04. This represents a 86.04 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 259,944 shares of company stock worth $30,214,186. Corporate insiders own 3.54% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Arista Networks by 304.2% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 96,084,951 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $10,620,270,000 after buying an additional 72,311,318 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC lifted its position 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 buying an additional 44,269,572 shares during the last quarter. Cresset Asset Management LLC lifted its position 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 worth $3,016,207,000 after buying an additional 20,059,303 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Arista Networks by 311.6% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 24,165,355 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $2,665,829,000 after buying an additional 18,293,874 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Alliancebernstein L.P. lifted its position in shares of Arista Networks by 218.5% during the 4th 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 during 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.