Analysts Set Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) Target Price at $176.47

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) has received an average recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from the twenty-three analysts that are currently covering the company, Marketbeat reports. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eighteen have given a buy rating to the company. The average 12 month price target among analysts that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $176.4706.

A number of research analysts have recently issued reports on ANET shares. The Goldman Sachs Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $188.00 price objective (up from $165.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. TD Cowen started coverage on Arista Networks in a research note on Thursday, March 12th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $170.00 target price for the company. Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Monday, December 29th. KeyCorp reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $178.00 price target (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Finally, Evercore reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $200.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Friday, February 13th.

Arista Networks Stock Performance

Shares of ANET opened at $135.37 on Friday. Arista Networks has a fifty-two week low of $59.43 and a fifty-two week high of $164.94. The firm has a market cap of $170.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 49.05, a PEG ratio of 2.37 and a beta of 1.46. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $134.82 and a 200-day moving average price of $137.34.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 12th. The technology company reported $0.82 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.75 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $2.49 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.38 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 38.99% and a return on equity of 30.37%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 28.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $0.66 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Arista Networks will post 2.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Arista Networks news, insider Kenneth Duda sold 32,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $142.44, for a total transaction of $4,558,080.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider owned 12,976 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,848,301.44. This represents a 71.15% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, Director Charles H. Giancarlo sold 8,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $140.43, for a total value of $1,123,440.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 9,784 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,373,967.12. This represents a 44.98% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders have sold a total of 196,237 shares of company stock valued at $25,865,760 over the last three months. 3.54% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of Arista Networks

Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Arista Networks in the 2nd quarter worth about $1,228,177,000. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA increased its position in shares of Arista Networks by 2,829.0% during the third quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA now owns 5,721,156 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $833,630,000 after buying an additional 5,525,828 shares during the period. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership increased its position in shares of Arista Networks by 82.5% during the third quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 9,587,115 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $1,396,939,000 after buying an additional 4,332,659 shares during the period. M&T Bank Corp raised its stake in Arista Networks by 3,182.7% in the fourth quarter. M&T Bank Corp now owns 4,012,373 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $525,741,000 after buying an additional 3,890,146 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Franklin Resources Inc. raised its stake in Arista Networks by 59.3% in the fourth quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. now owns 7,878,360 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $1,032,302,000 after buying an additional 2,934,098 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

About Arista Networks

Arista Networks, Inc is a technology company that designs and sells cloud networking solutions for large-scale data centers and enterprise environments. The company is best known for its high-performance switching and routing platforms, which are used to build scalable, low-latency networks for cloud service providers, internet companies, financial services, telecommunications, and enterprise IT. Arista’s offerings emphasize programmability, automation and telemetry to support modern, software-driven network architectures.

Central to Arista’s product portfolio is its Extensible Operating System (EOS), a modular network operating system that provides consistent programmability, stateful control and advanced visibility across the company’s hardware platforms.