Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Shares Up 4.5% – Still a Buy?

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) was up 4.5% on Friday . The company traded as high as $165.25 and last traded at $163.3780. Approximately 6,023,433 shares changed hands during trading, a decline of 31% from the average daily volume of 8,764,698 shares. The stock had previously closed at $156.40.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several brokerages have recently commented on ANET. Rosenblatt Securities boosted their target price on shares of Arista Networks from $180.00 to $210.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. Wolfe Research restated an “outperform” rating and set a $175.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Wednesday. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $181.00 target price (up from $175.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. Susquehanna raised Arista Networks to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 1st. Finally, UBS Group restated a “buy” rating and issued a $187.00 target price (up from $177.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-one have assigned a Buy rating and two have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $186.47.

Arista Networks Stock Performance

The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $153.66 and its 200 day simple moving average is $139.83. The stock has a market capitalization of $205.73 billion, a P/E ratio of 55.95, a PEG ratio of 2.34 and a beta of 1.61.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, May 5th. The technology company reported $0.87 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.81 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $2.71 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.62 billion. Arista Networks had a return on equity of 30.10% and a net margin of 38.32%.Arista Networks’s revenue for the quarter was up 35.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $0.65 EPS. Arista Networks has set its Q2 2026 guidance at 0.880-0.880 EPS. As a group, research analysts expect that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 3.27 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Arista Networks

In other news, insider Kenneth Duda sold 32,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, March 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $134.14, for a total value of $4,292,480.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 12,976 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,740,600.64. This represents a 71.15% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, major shareholder Andreas Bechtolsheim sold 240,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, June 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $163.06, for a total transaction of $39,134,400.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider directly owned 331,848 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $54,111,134.88. This represents a 41.97% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 2,403,142 shares of company stock worth $388,820,943 over the last ninety days. 2.70% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Arista Networks

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Arista Networks by 1.2% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 101,189,629 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $13,258,877,000 after purchasing an additional 1,188,799 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its stake in Arista Networks by 1.4% in the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 46,970,697 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $6,154,570,000 after acquiring an additional 628,146 shares during the period. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its holdings in Arista Networks by 1.0% during the 4th quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 37,171,766 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $4,870,618,000 after purchasing an additional 380,724 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in Arista Networks by 1.8% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 26,447,629 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $3,455,095,000 after purchasing an additional 477,625 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank bought a new position in Arista Networks during the fourth quarter worth $1,558,563,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

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.