Vanguard Group Inc. Raises Holdings in Arista Networks, Inc. $ANET

Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) by 1.0% in the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 100,000,830 shares of the technology company’s stock after acquiring an additional 1,007,730 shares during the quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. owned 7.96% of Arista Networks worth $14,571,121,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of ANET. Capital Planning Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of Arista Networks during the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $1,392,000. Fifth Third Bancorp grew its position in Arista Networks by 2.0% during the third quarter. Fifth Third Bancorp now owns 854,376 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $124,491,000 after buying an additional 16,376 shares during the period. Smithfield Trust Co increased its holdings in Arista Networks by 662.5% in the third quarter. Smithfield Trust Co now owns 1,342 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $195,000 after buying an additional 1,166 shares in the last quarter. State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D raised its position in shares of Arista Networks by 2.7% in the third quarter. State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D now owns 374,890 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $54,625,000 after acquiring an additional 10,011 shares during the period. Finally, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 3.5% during the 3rd quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 301,391 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $43,916,000 after acquiring an additional 10,318 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

Key Arista Networks News

Here are the key news stories impacting Arista Networks this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Reported stronger-than-expected Q4 results: EPS $0.82 vs. $0.75 est., revenue $2.49B (+28.9% YoY) and record net income; company raised AI revenue targets and issued revenue guidance above Street estimates, supporting the AI-driven growth narrative. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Analysts are lifting price targets and turning more bullish (Wells Fargo, Needham, Rosenblatt among those raising targets/ratings), giving additional analyst-driven momentum to the stock. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Market views Arista as outperforming peers (notably Cisco) by managing supply-chain pressures and capturing hyperscaler AI capex, which supports margin resilience and share gains. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Management said Arista is diversifying accelerator support: deployments that were ~99% Nvidia a year ago now include ~20–25% AMD — a strategic shift that increases customer options but alters vendor dynamics. Traders note this may be weighing on GPU vendor stocks while benefiting Arista’s flexibility. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Unusually high options activity is signaling elevated trader interest/positioning ahead of and after earnings. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Valuation is rich (ANET trades at a high P/E), and some commentary asks whether the recent run (one-year gains) leaves less margin for error if growth slows. This could temper longer-term upside. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Rising component/memory costs are a sector-wide headwind; management says it’s mitigating impacts via purchase commitments, but cost pressure remains a watch item for margins. Read More.

Arista Networks Stock Performance

Shares of ANET stock opened at $141.46 on Monday. Arista Networks, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $59.43 and a fifty-two week high of $164.94. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $133.05 and its two-hundred day moving average is $137.10. The firm has a market capitalization of $178.13 billion, a P/E ratio of 51.25, a PEG ratio of 2.39 and a beta of 1.42.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, February 12th. The technology company reported $0.82 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.75 by $0.07. The business had revenue of $2.49 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.38 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 38.99% and a return on equity of 30.37%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 28.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $0.66 earnings per share. On average, equities analysts forecast that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 2.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

ANET has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. Erste Group Bank cut Arista Networks from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, November 10th. Needham & Company LLC upped their target price on Arista Networks from $165.00 to $185.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday. Morgan Stanley reiterated an “overweight” rating and set a $165.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Friday. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and issued a $175.00 price target (up previously from $159.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday. Finally, KeyCorp reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $178.00 price objective (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday. Eighteen investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Arista Networks currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $175.41.

Insider Buying and Selling at Arista Networks

In related news, insider Kenneth Duda sold 26,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, January 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $128.43, for a total value of $3,339,180.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 522,400 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $67,091,832. This trade represents a 4.74% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, Director Kelly Bodnar Battles sold 422 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, November 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.15, for a total value of $49,437.30. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 8,980 shares in the company, valued at $1,052,007. This trade represents a 4.49% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold a total of 160,464 shares of company stock worth $20,351,388 in the last quarter. Insiders own 3.54% 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.