Investors Buy Large Volume of Call Options on Nutanix (NASDAQ:NTNX)

Nutanix (NASDAQ:NTNX) was the target of unusually large options trading activity on Tuesday. Traders bought 13,125 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 315% compared to the average daily volume of 3,163 call options.

Institutional Trading of Nutanix

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Nutanix by 3.1% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 27,514,943 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $1,422,247,000 after purchasing an additional 832,468 shares during the period. AQR Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in Nutanix by 72.8% in the 4th quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 11,452,714 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $591,991,000 after acquiring an additional 4,826,443 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in Nutanix by 2.6% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 5,283,964 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $272,452,000 after acquiring an additional 135,533 shares in the last quarter. FIL Ltd lifted its position in shares of Nutanix by 180.1% in the 4th quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 4,333,937 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $224,021,000 after acquiring an additional 2,786,929 shares during the period. Finally, First Trust Advisors LP grew its holdings in shares of Nutanix by 14.0% during the 4th quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 3,647,276 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $188,528,000 after purchasing an additional 447,806 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 85.25% of the company’s stock.

Nutanix Stock Down 2.7%

Shares of NTNX opened at $39.31 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $10.43 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 42.73, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.32 and a beta of 0.49. The company’s fifty day moving average is $40.95 and its 200-day moving average is $55.19. Nutanix has a 12 month low of $35.39 and a 12 month high of $83.36.

Nutanix (NASDAQ:NTNX) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 25th. The technology company reported $0.56 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.44 by $0.12. The business had revenue of $722.83 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $709.83 million. Nutanix had a net margin of 9.95% and a negative return on equity of 37.41%. Nutanix’s quarterly revenue was up 10.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $0.47 EPS. As a group, research analysts predict that Nutanix will post 0.31 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts have issued reports on NTNX shares. Wells Fargo & Company cut their target price on shares of Nutanix from $57.00 to $50.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. William Blair restated a “market perform” rating on shares of Nutanix in a report on Monday. The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their price objective on Nutanix from $75.00 to $60.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Monday, February 9th. Northland Securities lowered their target price on Nutanix from $76.00 to $53.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, November 26th. Finally, Piper Sandler dropped their target price on Nutanix from $72.00 to $63.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Eleven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $62.43.

Nutanix Company Profile

Nutanix, Inc is an enterprise cloud computing company that develops software to simplify the deployment and management of datacenter infrastructure. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Nutanix is best known for pioneering hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), an approach that integrates compute, storage and virtualization into a single software-defined platform aimed at reducing complexity and operational overhead in private and hybrid cloud environments.

The company’s product portfolio centers on the Nutanix Cloud Platform, which includes its core AOS software for HCI, Prism for infrastructure management and automation, and a suite of additional services such as Calm for application automation, Files and Volumes for file and block services, Karbon for Kubernetes orchestration, and Era for database management.