Investors Purchase Large Volume of Pure Storage Call Options (NYSE:PSTG)

Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG) was the target of unusually large options trading activity on Monday. Stock traders acquired 17,210 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 191% compared to the typical daily volume of 5,910 call options.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research analysts recently issued reports on PSTG shares. Lake Street Capital boosted their price objective on Pure Storage from $80.00 to $92.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Oppenheimer began coverage on shares of Pure Storage in a report on Monday, November 17th. They set an “outperform” rating and a $120.00 price target on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped their price target on shares of Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. TD Cowen raised their price objective on shares of Pure Storage from $85.00 to $100.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on shares of Pure Storage from $80.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, September 26th. Thirteen equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $95.26.

Insider Buying and Selling at Pure Storage

In related news, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of Pure Storage stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total transaction of $481,930.92. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 215,091 shares in the company, valued at approximately $14,441,209.74. The trade was a 3.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total value of $7,131,000.00. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold a total of 207,178 shares of company stock worth $16,771,931 in the last quarter. Corporate insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Mechanics Financial Corp acquired a new stake in Pure Storage in the second quarter worth about $25,000. Winnow Wealth LLC purchased a new position in Pure Storage during the third quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Provenance Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Pure Storage in the 3rd quarter valued at $27,000. Foster Dykema Cabot & Partners LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Pure Storage during the 3rd quarter worth about $28,000. Finally, Sunbelt Securities Inc. grew its holdings in Pure Storage by 287.1% in the third quarter. Sunbelt Securities Inc. now owns 329 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $28,000 after purchasing an additional 244 shares during the period. 83.42% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Pure Storage Stock Up 4.1%

PSTG opened at $75.39 on Wednesday. The company has a market capitalization of $24.89 billion, a PE ratio of 198.38, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 8.04 and a beta of 1.26. The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $76.22 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $74.46. Pure Storage has a 52 week low of $34.51 and a 52 week high of $100.59.

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

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.