Andreas Bechtolsheim Sells 205,000 Shares of Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Stock

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) major shareholder Andreas Bechtolsheim sold 205,000 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction on Friday, May 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $151.74, for a total value of $31,106,700.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 183,023,048 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $27,771,917,303.52. The trade was a 0.11% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Large shareholders that own 10% or more of a company’s shares are required to disclose their transactions with the SEC.

Arista Networks Stock Down 2.4%

Shares of Arista Networks stock traded down $3.84 on Wednesday, reaching $154.17. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 6,981,238 shares, compared to its average volume of 12,514,258. The company has a market capitalization of $194.13 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 52.80, a P/E/G ratio of 2.43 and a beta of 1.67. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $146.62 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $137.31. Arista Networks, Inc. has a 52 week low of $83.86 and a 52 week high of $179.80.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, May 5th. The technology company reported $0.87 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.81 by $0.06. The business had revenue of $2.71 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.62 billion. Arista Networks had a return on equity of 30.10% and a net margin of 38.32%.The company’s quarterly revenue 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 predict that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 3.28 EPS for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

ANET has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. UBS Group reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $187.00 target price (up from $177.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. Morgan Stanley reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $180.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday, May 1st. KeyCorp reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $178.00 price objective (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday, February 13th. The Goldman Sachs Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $188.00 price objective (up from $165.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Friday, February 13th. Finally, Zacks Research lowered Arista Networks from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, May 14th. Two equities research 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 company. According to MarketBeat, Arista Networks currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $181.84.

Institutional Trading of Arista Networks

Several large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in Arista Networks by 1.2% during the fourth 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 in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in Arista Networks by 1.4% during the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 46,970,697 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $6,154,570,000 after purchasing an additional 628,146 shares in the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its position in Arista Networks by 1.0% during the fourth 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 in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in Arista Networks by 1.8% during the fourth 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 in the last quarter. Finally, Norges Bank purchased a new position in Arista Networks during the fourth quarter valued at $1,558,563,000. Institutional investors own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

About Arista Networks

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.