Clifford Swan Investment Counsel LLC Decreases Holdings in Arista Networks, Inc. $ANET

Clifford Swan Investment Counsel LLC trimmed its position in Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) by 3.4% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 532,738 shares of the technology company’s stock after selling 18,491 shares during the quarter. Arista Networks accounts for 2.3% of Clifford Swan Investment Counsel LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 7th largest holding. Clifford Swan Investment Counsel LLC’s holdings in Arista Networks were worth $69,805,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its stake in Arista Networks by 1.2% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 101,189,629 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $13,258,877,000 after acquiring an additional 1,188,799 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 0.5% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 46,342,551 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $6,752,573,000 after buying an additional 245,976 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 1.8% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 26,447,629 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $3,455,095,000 after buying an additional 477,625 shares during the last quarter. Norges Bank bought a new stake in shares of Arista Networks during the fourth quarter worth $1,558,563,000. Finally, Invesco Ltd. grew its stake in shares of Arista Networks by 1.8% during the third quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 10,094,255 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $1,470,834,000 after buying an additional 181,813 shares during the last quarter. 82.47% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of analysts have weighed in on ANET shares. Citigroup decreased their target price on shares of Arista Networks from $176.00 to $173.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. Truist Financial set a $175.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. Weiss Ratings raised shares of Arista Networks from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Friday, May 15th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and set a $200.00 target price on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Finally, KeyCorp reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $178.00 target price (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Friday, February 13th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, nineteen have assigned a Buy rating and two have issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $185.72.

Arista Networks Stock Down 4.6%

Shares of Arista Networks stock opened at $166.31 on Friday. Arista Networks, Inc. has a twelve month low of $85.58 and a twelve month high of $179.80. The stock has a market cap of $209.42 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 56.96, a P/E/G ratio of 2.69 and a beta of 1.61. The company’s fifty day moving average is $150.59 and its 200 day moving average is $138.71.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, May 5th. The technology company reported $0.87 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.81 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $2.71 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.62 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 38.32% and a return on equity of 30.10%. Arista Networks’s revenue for the quarter was up 35.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $0.65 earnings per share. Arista Networks has set its Q2 2026 guidance at 0.880-0.880 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 3.27 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at Arista Networks

In related news, major shareholder Andreas Bechtolsheim sold 220,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 26th. The shares were sold at an average price of $156.86, for a total value of $34,509,200.00. Following the transaction, the insider owned 182,803,048 shares in the company, valued at $28,674,486,109.28. The trade was a 0.12% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 428,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, April 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $177.44, for a total transaction of $75,944,320.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 5,209,207 shares in the company, valued at approximately $924,321,690.08. The trade was a 7.59% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold a total of 1,943,142 shares of company stock worth $314,941,943 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 2.70% of the company’s stock.

Arista Networks 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.