Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA) Authorizes Stock Buyback Plan

Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA) announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a share buyback program on Monday, January 5th, RTT News reports. The company plans to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization allows the company to purchase up to 6.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are often an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Okta Trading Up 4.9%

Shares of OKTA traded up $4.07 during mid-day trading on Monday, hitting $87.71. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 3,633,250 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,130,667. The company’s 50-day moving average is $85.93 and its 200-day moving average is $90.64. Okta has a 52-week low of $75.05 and a 52-week high of $127.57. The firm has a market capitalization of $15.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 80.47, a PEG ratio of 3.91 and a beta of 0.76.

Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, December 2nd. The company reported $0.82 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.76 by $0.06. Okta had a return on equity of 3.77% and a net margin of 6.87%.The company had revenue of $742.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $730.23 million. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.67 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was up 11.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Okta has set its FY 2026 guidance at 3.430-3.440 EPS and its Q4 2026 guidance at 0.840-0.850 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Okta will post 0.42 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts have recently commented on OKTA shares. Citigroup lowered their price objective on shares of Okta from $110.00 to $100.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Susquehanna cut their target price on shares of Okta from $105.00 to $80.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. BTIG Research decreased their price objective on shares of Okta from $142.00 to $116.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Cantor Fitzgerald restated an “overweight” rating on shares of Okta in a research note on Wednesday, December 17th. Finally, UBS Group restated a “buy” rating on shares of Okta in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Twenty-four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, thirteen have assigned a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $114.09.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CEO Todd Mckinnon sold 11,286 shares of Okta stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $90.96, for a total value of $1,026,574.56. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider Eric Robert Kelleher sold 8,370 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, December 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $90.19, for a total transaction of $754,890.30. Following the transaction, the insider owned 11,266 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,016,080.54. This trade represents a 42.63% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 23,737 shares of company stock valued at $2,139,206. 5.68% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

About Okta

Okta, Inc is a publicly traded provider of identity and access management solutions, headquartered in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2009 by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest, the company completed its initial public offering in April 2017. Under the leadership of McKinnon as chief executive officer and Kerrest as chief operating officer, Okta has grown into a leading vendor in the cybersecurity space, focusing on secure user authentication, single sign-on and lifecycle management for digital identities.

At the core of Okta’s offering is the Okta Identity Cloud, a suite of cloud-native services that enable organizations to manage user access across web and mobile applications, on-premises systems and APIs.