Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) Stock Rating Lowered by Wall Street Zen

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) was downgraded by stock analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report issued to clients and investors on Friday.

Several other equities research analysts have also commented on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their price target on shares of Pure Storage from $80.00 to $100.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, September 26th. Northland Securities set a $77.00 target price on Pure Storage in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and set a $100.00 price target on shares of Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Wedbush lifted their price target on shares of Pure Storage from $90.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, Susquehanna set a $105.00 price target on Pure Storage in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Twelve investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $95.26.

Pure Storage Trading Down 2.3%

NYSE:PSTG opened at $69.79 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $23.04 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 183.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 7.93 and a beta of 1.26. Pure Storage has a twelve month low of $34.51 and a twelve month high of $100.59. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $73.33 and a 200-day simple moving average of $75.05.

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 net margin of 3.74% and a return on equity of 10.60%. The firm had revenue of $763.77 million for the quarter. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Pure Storage will post 0.44 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total transaction of $481,930.92. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 215,091 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $14,441,209.74. The trade was a 3.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of Pure Storage stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total value of $7,131,000.00. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last quarter, insiders sold 207,178 shares of company stock worth $16,771,931. Company insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in PSTG. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its holdings in Pure Storage by 1.9% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 33,891,025 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $2,840,407,000 after acquiring an additional 623,019 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its position in shares of Pure Storage by 1.9% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 10,864,918 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $910,589,000 after purchasing an additional 199,831 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Pure Storage by 1.7% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,273,696 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $417,830,000 after purchasing an additional 123,320 shares during the last quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC lifted its position in 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 buying an additional 2,612,300 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Atreides Management LP lifted its position in Pure Storage by 15.4% during the third quarter. Atreides Management LP now owns 4,098,376 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $343,485,000 after buying an additional 545,890 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 83.42% of the company’s stock.

Pure Storage Company Profile

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.