Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Shares Up 5.2% – Time to Buy?

Shares of Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) shot up 5.2% during mid-day trading on Tuesday . The stock traded as high as $130.69 and last traded at $129.8380. 8,618,767 shares changed hands during trading, an increase of 6% from the average session volume of 8,162,072 shares. The stock had previously closed at $123.42.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently commented on ANET. Erste Group Bank downgraded Arista Networks from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, November 10th. BNP Paribas upgraded Arista Networks from a “hold” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, September 25th. Zacks Research cut Arista Networks from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, October 6th. BNP Paribas Exane upgraded Arista Networks from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $172.00 price target for the company in a research note on Thursday, September 25th. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities reissued a “neutral” rating and issued a $140.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Monday, November 24th. Eighteen equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $164.44.

Arista Networks Stock Up 5.2%

The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $129.74 and a 200-day simple moving average of $132.31. The stock has a market cap of $163.50 billion, a PE ratio of 49.37, a P/E/G ratio of 2.07 and a beta of 1.41.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, November 4th. The technology company reported $0.75 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.72 by $0.03. The company had revenue of $2.31 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.26 billion. Arista Networks had a return on equity of 30.28% and a net margin of 39.73%.The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 27.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $2.40 earnings per share. On average, research analysts expect that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 2.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, Director Kelly Bodnar Battles sold 422 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $117.15, for a total value of $49,437.30. Following the sale, the director directly owned 8,980 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,052,007. This represents a 4.49% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 24,042 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 25th. The shares were sold at an average price of $124.55, for a total transaction of $2,994,431.10. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 9,917 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,235,162.35. This trade represents a 70.80% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. In the last ninety days, insiders have sold 216,464 shares of company stock valued at $28,488,988. Corporate insiders own 3.54% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. SteelPeak Wealth LLC increased its position in shares of Arista Networks by 23.8% during the 2nd quarter. SteelPeak Wealth LLC now owns 40,404 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $4,134,000 after purchasing an additional 7,779 shares during the last quarter. Penobscot Investment Management Company Inc. lifted its position in Arista Networks by 7.8% in the 2nd quarter. Penobscot Investment Management Company Inc. now owns 39,073 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $3,998,000 after buying an additional 2,815 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in Arista Networks by 1.2% in the second quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 98,993,100 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $10,127,984,000 after buying an additional 1,136,167 shares in the last quarter. Holocene Advisors LP bought a new position in Arista Networks during the second quarter valued at approximately $247,451,000. Finally, Three Seasons Wealth LLC purchased a new position in shares of Arista Networks during the third quarter worth approximately $2,483,000. 82.47% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.