Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Stock Price Down 1.2% Following Insider Selling

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET)’s share price was down 1.2% during trading on Thursday following insider selling activity. The stock traded as low as $125.34 and last traded at $128.6870. Approximately 9,579,591 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 12% from the average daily volume of 8,523,276 shares. The stock had previously closed at $130.28.

Specifically, Director Charles H. Giancarlo sold 8,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $140.43, for a total transaction of $1,123,440.00. Following the sale, the director directly owned 9,784 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,373,967.12. This represents a 44.98% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink.

Analyst Ratings Changes

ANET has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. UBS Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $155.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Barclays reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $183.00 target price (up from $179.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Wednesday, November 5th. Erste Group Bank lowered Arista Networks from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, November 10th. Rosenblatt Securities reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $140.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Monday, November 24th. Finally, Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Monday, December 29th. Seventeen investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $164.44.

Arista Networks Stock Up 6.9%

The company has a market cap of $173.15 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 52.28, a PEG ratio of 2.17 and a beta of 1.42. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $131.78 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $135.93.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, November 4th. The technology company reported $0.75 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.72 by $0.03. Arista Networks had a net margin of 39.73% and a return on equity of 30.28%. The firm had revenue of $2.31 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.26 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $2.40 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 27.5% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts predict that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 2.2 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of Arista Networks

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. AdvisorNet Financial Inc boosted its holdings in shares of Arista Networks by 56.7% in the third quarter. AdvisorNet Financial Inc now owns 199 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $29,000 after acquiring an additional 72 shares during the period. Knuff & Co LLC purchased a new stake in Arista Networks in the 3rd quarter valued at $29,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund acquired a new stake in Arista Networks during the 4th quarter worth $26,000. Richardson Financial Services Inc. grew its position in Arista Networks by 141.3% during the 3rd 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 last quarter. Finally, Quarry LP acquired a new position in Arista Networks in the third quarter valued at $33,000. 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.