Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) Trading 8.5% Higher – Time to Buy?

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

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have issued reports on PSTG. Tigress Financial set a $105.00 price objective on shares of Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a “hold (c)” rating on shares of Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, October 8th. Morgan Stanley set a $83.00 target price on shares of Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $100.00 target price on shares of Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, Barclays boosted their price objective on Pure Storage from $70.00 to $77.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Thirteen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $95.26.

Pure Storage Price Performance

The stock has a market capitalization of $23.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 190.47, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 7.44 and a beta of 1.26. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $77.14 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $74.20.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, September 9th. The technology company reported $0.44 earnings per share for the quarter. The business had revenue of $763.77 million for the quarter. Pure Storage had a net margin of 3.74% and a return on equity of 10.60%. Research analysts anticipate that Pure Storage, Inc. will post 0.44 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total value of $7,131,000.00. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total value of $481,930.92. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider directly owned 215,091 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,441,209.74. The trade was a 3.23% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold a total of 307,178 shares of company stock valued at $26,020,931 over the last three months. Corporate insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Pure Storage

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Versant Capital Management Inc boosted its stake in shares of Pure Storage by 8.3% during the 3rd quarter. Versant Capital Management Inc now owns 1,598 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $134,000 after acquiring an additional 122 shares in the last quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC boosted its position in shares of Pure Storage by 40.1% in the 3rd quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC now owns 468 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $39,000 after purchasing an additional 134 shares during the period. One Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Pure Storage by 1.0% in the 3rd quarter. One Capital Management LLC now owns 14,750 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $1,236,000 after purchasing an additional 141 shares in the last quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd increased its stake in Pure Storage by 0.3% in the 3rd quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd now owns 43,756 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $3,667,000 after purchasing an additional 152 shares in the last quarter. Finally, State of Wyoming raised its holdings in Pure Storage by 10.3% during the 3rd quarter. State of Wyoming now owns 1,673 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $140,000 after buying an additional 156 shares during the period. 83.42% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.