Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) Lowered to Hold Rating by Wall Street Zen

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) was downgraded by analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a note issued to investors on Friday.

PSTG has been the subject of several other reports. Raymond James Financial increased their price objective on Pure Storage from $88.00 to $99.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, October 17th. Citigroup lowered their price target on Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Weiss Ratings reissued a “hold (c)” rating on shares of Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, October 8th. Morgan Stanley set a $83.00 price objective on shares of Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their target price on shares of Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Twelve analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $95.26.

Pure Storage Trading Down 2.3%

Pure Storage stock opened at $69.79 on Friday. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $73.33 and a 200 day moving average price of $75.05. Pure Storage has a 12-month low of $34.51 and a 12-month high of $100.59. The stock has a market cap of $23.04 billion, a P/E ratio of 183.65, a PEG ratio of 7.93 and a beta of 1.26.

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

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total value of $481,930.92. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider owned 215,091 shares in the company, valued at approximately $14,441,209.74. This represents a 3.23% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of Pure Storage stock in a transaction on Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total transaction of $7,131,000.00. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold 207,178 shares of company stock valued at $16,771,931 over the last ninety days. 5.60% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Pure Storage

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Farther Finance Advisors LLC grew its position in shares of Pure Storage by 110.2% during the fourth quarter. Farther Finance Advisors LLC now owns 6,082 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $408,000 after acquiring an additional 3,189 shares during the last quarter. Oak Ridge Investments LLC acquired a new stake in Pure Storage during the 4th quarter worth $327,000. Transcend Capital Advisors LLC grew its position in Pure Storage by 6.6% during the 4th quarter. Transcend Capital Advisors LLC now owns 3,334 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $223,000 after purchasing an additional 207 shares during the last quarter. Dara Capital US Inc. acquired a new position in Pure Storage in the fourth quarter valued at $110,000. Finally, Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. increased its stake in Pure Storage by 170.5% in the fourth quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 456,437 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $30,586,000 after purchasing an additional 287,727 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 83.42% of the company’s stock.

About Pure Storage

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.