Pacific Crest Securities Increased the Ratings of Netapp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), Needham & Co. Surged the Target Price to $49

On August 13, 2014, NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) reported the earnings of its first fiscal quarter of the year 2015. The company has been seeing bullish ratings on the power gauge.

NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) surpassed the earnings estimates, and reported figures that were 7 percent more than the analyst estimates. The company also surpassed the revenue estimates of analysts. After its remarkable first fiscal quarter, the company has forecasted an even better outlook for its second quarter. According to the management of the company, there has been an increase in the demand of the storage products of the company, which will increase the figures of the second quarter even further.

Needham & Company updated NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) ratings to a ‘buy’ from a previously given ratings of ‘hold’. The research firm also increased the target price of the company to $49.

The company’s ratings were also increased by Pacific Crest Securities even before NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) reported its first quarter’s earnings figures, which suggests that the other analyst firms will also join the camp in the near future.

The stocks of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) increased on Thursday, August 14, 2014 and closed at its week high of $41.67. The increase in the stocks prices of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) suggests a buy rating from many other firms.

NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) designs and distributes the innovative storage and data management systems to the market. The company helps different sectors of the industry with their complex procedures of managing and storing data by providing them with simple and easy to use systems. Sources have it that the systems provided by NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) not only reduce the costs of the business but they also minimize the risk; and that is why the demand of NetApp Inc.’s (NASDAQ:NTAP) products is on a rise.

NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) faced a number of challenges over its most recent quarter including the reduced American’s IT budgets, a reduction in the government spending and an increase in the cloud computing services from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Rackspance Hosting Inc (NYSE:RAX). The company dealt with these challenges by cutting down its costs in order to increase profits, entering into partnership agreements with competitor companies (EC2 of Amazon) and facilitating the private storage process with the help of Amazon’s cloud computing services.

The company is repurchasing its stocks, and it still has around $5.6 billion cash lying around for the execution of this plan. The company’s ROE is also on a rise, for the company has successfully reduced some of its costs.

Pacific Crest Securities updated the ratings of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) to ‘outperform’ and gave the company’s stocks a price target of $46. The research firm also increased the company’s earnings outlook for the year 2015 to $2.96 per share.

Coming to the stock prices of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), the company, on the last trading day, started its stocks at a price of $41.36 and closed at a price of $41.11. The company has a market capitalization of $13.46 billion with a price to earnings ratio of 22.34. As far as the dividend yield of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) is concerned, the numbers are reported to be around 1.61 percent.

Shares of Netapp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) started Tuesday’s trading session at a value of $41.80 with an average volume of 1.05 M to 3.64 M. Market cap of the stock is 13.37 B whereas its inst. Ownership is 86%.