Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) Cut to Hold at Wall Street Zen

Wall Street Zen downgraded shares of Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report sent to investors on Friday.

A number of other research firms also recently issued reports on PSTG. UBS Group increased their price objective on shares of Pure Storage from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the company a “sell” rating in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Tigress Financial set a $105.00 target price on Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “hold (c)” rating on shares of Pure Storage in a report on Wednesday, October 8th. Raymond James Financial upped their price objective on Pure Storage from $88.00 to $99.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, October 17th. Finally, Citigroup dropped their price objective on Pure Storage from $110.00 to $105.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Twelve investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $95.26.

Pure Storage Trading Down 2.3%

PSTG opened at $69.79 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $23.04 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 183.65, a PEG ratio of 7.74 and a beta of 1.26. Pure Storage has a 12-month low of $34.51 and a 12-month high of $100.59. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $73.33 and its 200-day simple moving average is $75.29.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, September 9th. The technology company reported $0.44 earnings per share for the quarter. Pure Storage had a return on equity of 10.60% and a net margin of 3.74%.The firm had revenue of $763.77 million during the quarter. On average, equities research analysts predict that Pure Storage will post 0.44 EPS for the current year.

Insider Transactions at Pure Storage

In related news, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred 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 directly owned 215,091 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $14,441,209.74. This trade represents a 3.23% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of Pure Storage stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total transaction of $7,131,000.00. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 207,178 shares of company stock valued at $16,771,931. 5.60% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Pure Storage by 1.9% during the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 33,891,025 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $2,840,407,000 after buying an additional 623,019 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in Pure Storage by 1.9% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 10,864,918 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $910,589,000 after acquiring an additional 199,831 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in Pure Storage by 1.7% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,273,696 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $417,830,000 after purchasing an additional 123,320 shares during the last quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Pure Storage by 112.9% in the second quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC now owns 4,926,836 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $283,687,000 after purchasing an additional 2,612,300 shares during the period. Finally, Atreides Management LP increased its holdings in shares of Pure Storage by 15.4% in the third quarter. Atreides Management LP now owns 4,098,376 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $343,485,000 after purchasing an additional 545,890 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.