Arista Networks, Inc. $ANET Holdings Trimmed by First Trust Advisors LP

First Trust Advisors LP reduced its position in shares of Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) by 26.6% during the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 3,878,141 shares of the technology company’s stock after selling 1,408,588 shares during the quarter. First Trust Advisors LP’s holdings in Arista Networks were worth $565,084,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Walkner Condon Financial Advisors LLC lifted its position in shares of Arista Networks by 0.4% in the third quarter. Walkner Condon Financial Advisors LLC now owns 18,509 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $2,697,000 after purchasing an additional 70 shares in the last quarter. AdvisorNet Financial Inc grew its position in Arista Networks by 56.7% during the third quarter. AdvisorNet Financial Inc now owns 199 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $29,000 after purchasing an additional 72 shares in the last quarter. Crown Wealth Group LLC grew its position in Arista Networks by 2.4% during the third quarter. Crown Wealth Group LLC now owns 3,175 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $463,000 after purchasing an additional 75 shares in the last quarter. Fragasso Financial Advisors Inc increased its stake in Arista Networks by 1.8% in the 3rd quarter. Fragasso Financial Advisors Inc now owns 4,237 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $616,000 after buying an additional 76 shares during the period. Finally, West Family Investments Inc. increased its stake in Arista Networks by 0.9% in the 3rd quarter. West Family Investments Inc. now owns 8,364 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $1,219,000 after buying an additional 76 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

Arista Networks Trading Down 4.5%

ANET opened at $133.15 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $167.31 billion, a PE ratio of 48.24, a P/E/G ratio of 2.47 and a beta of 1.46. Arista Networks, Inc. has a 1 year low of $59.43 and a 1 year high of $164.94. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $134.45 and its 200-day simple moving average is $137.15.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 12th. The technology company reported $0.82 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.75 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $2.49 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.38 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 38.99% and a return on equity of 30.37%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $0.66 EPS. Equities analysts forecast that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 2.2 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Arista Networks news, Director Charles H. Giancarlo sold 8,000 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 2nd. The stock was 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 approximately $1,373,967.12. The trade was a 44.98% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, insider Kenneth Duda sold 32,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $142.44, for a total value of $4,558,080.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 12,976 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,848,301.44. This represents a 71.15% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold a total of 196,237 shares of company stock worth $25,865,760 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 3.39% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities research analysts have issued reports on the stock. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $175.00 target price (up from $159.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a “hold (c+)” rating on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Monday, December 29th. KeyCorp reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $178.00 price objective (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Friday, February 13th. Morgan Stanley restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $165.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Finally, Barclays reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $184.00 target price (up from $183.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Friday, February 13th. Seventeen investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $176.88.

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.