Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) Trading Up 8.5% – What’s Next?

Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG)’s share price traded up 8.5% on Monday . The stock traded as high as $72.45 and last traded at $72.6880. 1,155,106 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 64% from the average session volume of 3,216,655 shares. The stock had previously closed at $66.98.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their price target on shares of Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Morgan Stanley set a $83.00 target price on Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Tigress Financial set a $105.00 price target on Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. UBS Group increased their price objective on Pure Storage from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock a “sell” rating in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, Raymond James Financial raised their price objective on Pure Storage from $88.00 to $99.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, October 17th. Thirteen research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $95.26.

Pure Storage Price Performance

The stock has a market cap of $23.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 190.47, a P/E/G ratio of 7.44 and a beta of 1.26. The business has a fifty day moving average of $77.14 and a 200 day moving average of $74.20.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last posted its 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 company had revenue of $763.77 million during the quarter. On average, analysts expect that Pure Storage, Inc. will post 0.44 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Pure Storage

In other Pure Storage news, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total transaction of $481,930.92. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 215,091 shares in the company, valued at $14,441,209.74. This trade represents a 3.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of the company’s 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 SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders have sold 307,178 shares of company stock worth $26,020,931 over the last three months. Company insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of PSTG. Vanguard Group Inc. grew 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 buying an additional 623,019 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp increased its position in Pure Storage by 1.9% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 10,864,918 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $910,589,000 after acquiring an additional 199,831 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Pure Storage by 1.7% in the 2nd 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 period. William Blair Investment Management LLC boosted its holdings in Pure Storage by 112.9% in the 2nd quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC now owns 4,926,836 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $283,687,000 after purchasing an additional 2,612,300 shares during the period. Finally, Atreides Management LP grew its position in Pure Storage by 15.4% in the 3rd quarter. Atreides Management LP now owns 4,098,376 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $343,485,000 after purchasing an additional 545,890 shares during the last quarter. 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.