Insider Selling: Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Director Sells 422 Shares of Stock

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) Director Kelly Bodnar Battles sold 422 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $128.06, for a total transaction of $54,041.32. Following the transaction, the director owned 9,529 shares in the company, valued at $1,220,283.74. The trade was a 4.24% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link.

Arista Networks Trading Up 3.2%

ANET stock traded up $4.13 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, reaching $132.90. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 7,186,168 shares, compared to its average volume of 8,990,663. The company’s 50 day moving average is $133.98 and its two-hundred day moving average is $137.47. Arista Networks, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $59.43 and a fifty-two week high of $164.94. The stock has a market cap of $167.00 billion, a PE ratio of 48.15, a P/E/G ratio of 2.28 and a beta of 1.42.

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

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

ANET has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. KeyCorp restated an “overweight” rating and set a $178.00 price objective (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Friday, February 13th. Needham & Company LLC increased their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $165.00 to $185.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Wells Fargo & Company raised their price target on shares of Arista Networks from $175.00 to $185.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, February 13th. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Monday, December 29th. Finally, Erste Group Bank lowered Arista Networks from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, November 10th. Seventeen equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $176.88.

Institutional Trading of Arista Networks

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in ANET. AdvisorNet Financial Inc raised its holdings in shares of Arista Networks by 56.7% in the 3rd quarter. AdvisorNet Financial Inc now owns 199 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $29,000 after buying an additional 72 shares during the period. Knuff & Co LLC purchased a new position in Arista Networks during the 3rd quarter valued at about $29,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund acquired a new position in Arista Networks in the 4th quarter valued at about $26,000. Prosperity Bancshares Inc purchased a new stake in Arista Networks during the fourth quarter worth about $28,000. Finally, Richardson Financial Services Inc. increased its stake in Arista Networks by 141.3% during the third 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. 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.