DAVENPORT & Co LLC Acquires 5,274 Shares of Arista Networks, Inc. $ANET

DAVENPORT & Co LLC lifted its holdings in Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) by 15.1% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 40,244 shares of the technology company’s stock after buying an additional 5,274 shares during the period. DAVENPORT & Co LLC’s holdings in Arista Networks were worth $5,273,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. AdvisorNet Financial Inc increased its stake in Arista Networks by 56.7% during the third quarter. AdvisorNet Financial Inc now owns 199 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $29,000 after acquiring an additional 72 shares during the last quarter. Knuff & Co LLC bought a new stake in shares of Arista Networks in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $29,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund bought a new stake in shares of Arista Networks in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Richardson Financial Services Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Arista Networks by 141.3% in the 3rd quarter. Richardson Financial Services Inc. now owns 222 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $32,000 after purchasing an additional 130 shares during the period. Finally, Quarry LP purchased a new position in shares of Arista Networks in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $33,000. 82.47% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

ANET has been the topic of several recent research reports. The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “buy” rating and set a $188.00 price target (up from $165.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday, February 13th. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price objective on shares of Arista Networks from $175.00 to $185.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, February 13th. UBS Group set a $200.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Tuesday, February 24th. Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $200.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Finally, Barclays restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $184.00 target price (up from $183.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday, February 13th. Eighteen investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Arista Networks currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $176.47.

Insider Activity at Arista Networks

In related news, insider Kenneth Duda sold 32,000 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, March 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $134.14, for a total transaction of $4,292,480.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 12,976 shares in the company, valued at $1,740,600.64. This trade represents a 71.15% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director Kelly Bodnar Battles sold 422 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $128.06, for a total transaction of $54,041.32. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 9,529 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,220,283.74. This trade represents a 4.24% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold a total of 199,632 shares of company stock valued at $26,936,324 over the last ninety days. Company insiders own 3.39% of the company’s stock.

Arista Networks Stock Performance

Shares of ANET stock opened at $122.59 on Friday. Arista Networks, Inc. has a 52-week low of $59.43 and a 52-week high of $164.94. The firm has a market capitalization of $154.03 billion, a P/E ratio of 44.42, a P/E/G ratio of 2.39 and a beta of 1.46. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $135.67 and a 200 day moving average price of $137.03.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 12th. The technology company reported $0.82 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.75 by $0.07. Arista Networks had a return on equity of 30.37% and a net margin of 38.99%.The company had revenue of $2.49 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.38 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $0.66 EPS. Arista Networks’s quarterly revenue was up 28.9% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 2.2 EPS for the current year.

Arista Networks Company Profile

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.