Wall Street Zen Upgrades Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) to Buy

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) was upgraded by research analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report issued on Saturday.

PSTG has been the subject of several other reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their target price on Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Wedbush increased their price objective on shares of Pure Storage from $90.00 to $100.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Susquehanna set a $105.00 target price on shares of Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Morgan Stanley set a $83.00 target price on shares of Pure Storage in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, Citigroup dropped their price target on shares of Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Thirteen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $95.26.

Pure Storage Stock Up 3.1%

PSTG stock opened at $69.14 on Friday. Pure Storage has a twelve month low of $34.51 and a twelve month high of $100.59. The company has a market cap of $22.72 billion, a PE ratio of 181.95, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 7.49 and a beta of 1.27. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $84.87 and its 200 day simple moving average is $72.46.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, September 9th. The technology company reported $0.44 EPS for the quarter. Pure Storage had a return on equity of 10.60% and a net margin of 3.74%.The firm had revenue of $763.77 million during the quarter. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Pure Storage will post 0.44 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other news, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total value of $7,131,000.00. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,014 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $85.85, for a total value of $602,151.90. Following the sale, the insider owned 229,307 shares in the company, valued at approximately $19,686,005.95. This trade represents a 2.97% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 327,311 shares of company stock worth $27,896,100. 5.60% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Pure Storage

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Pure Storage during the 2nd quarter worth about $225,203,000. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership raised its stake in shares of Pure Storage by 786.9% in the third quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 4,027,610 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $337,554,000 after acquiring an additional 3,573,493 shares during the last quarter. Atreides Management LP acquired a new position in shares of Pure Storage during the second quarter worth approximately $204,552,000. William Blair Investment Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Pure Storage by 112.9% during the second quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC now owns 4,926,836 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $283,687,000 after purchasing an additional 2,612,300 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Polar Capital Holdings Plc grew its stake in shares of Pure Storage by 90.5% during the third quarter. Polar Capital Holdings Plc now owns 2,831,141 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $237,278,000 after purchasing an additional 1,345,207 shares during the last quarter. 83.42% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Pure Storage

Pure Storage, Inc (NYSE: PSTG) is a technology company that designs and sells data storage hardware and software for enterprise and cloud environments. The company is best known for its all-flash storage arrays that are engineered to deliver high performance, low latency and simplified management compared with traditional disk-based systems. Its product portfolio includes purpose-built arrays and software aimed at transactional databases, virtualized infrastructures, analytics and large-scale file/object workloads.

Key product and software offerings include the FlashArray family for block storage and FlashBlade for file and object workloads, together with Purity, the company’s storage operating environment.