Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Trims Stock Position in VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW)

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board lowered its stake in shares of VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) by 10.6% in the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 225,677 shares of the virtualization software provider’s stock after selling 26,698 shares during the period. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s holdings in VMware were worth $32,428,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of VMW. MetLife Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of VMware in the 1st quarter valued at about $928,000. Yousif Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of VMware by 59.7% in the 1st quarter. Yousif Capital Management LLC now owns 4,648 shares of the virtualization software provider’s stock valued at $529,000 after purchasing an additional 1,738 shares in the last quarter. Blair William & Co. IL increased its stake in shares of VMware by 24.7% in the 1st quarter. Blair William & Co. IL now owns 8,837 shares of the virtualization software provider’s stock valued at $1,006,000 after purchasing an additional 1,752 shares in the last quarter. Aviva PLC increased its stake in shares of VMware by 8.0% in the 1st quarter. Aviva PLC now owns 72,308 shares of the virtualization software provider’s stock valued at $8,234,000 after purchasing an additional 5,351 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Prudential PLC purchased a new position in shares of VMware in the 1st quarter valued at about $419,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 46.70% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

VMW has been the subject of several research reports. BMO Capital Markets boosted their price objective on VMware from $140.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Monness Crespi & Hardt lowered VMware from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research note on Monday, August 28th. StockNews.com initiated coverage on VMware in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a “strong-buy” rating for the company. Mizuho boosted their price objective on VMware from $158.00 to $165.00 in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Finally, UBS Group boosted their price objective on VMware from $180.00 to $182.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $160.25.

VMware Trading Down 0.4 %

Shares of VMware stock opened at $148.60 on Wednesday. The stock has a market cap of $64.16 billion, a P/E ratio of 44.89 and a beta of 0.71. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $160.24 and its 200-day simple moving average is $150.49. VMware, Inc. has a 1-year low of $109.00 and a 1-year high of $181.14. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.71, a current ratio of 0.87 and a quick ratio of 0.87.

VMware (NYSE:VMW) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, August 31st. The virtualization software provider reported $1.83 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.71 by $0.12. VMware had a return on equity of 113.34% and a net margin of 10.48%. The business had revenue of $3.41 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.45 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $0.99 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 2.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts predict that VMware, Inc. will post 4.92 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at VMware

In related news, EVP Jean Pierre Brulard sold 5,779 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $178.29, for a total value of $1,030,337.91. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 71,053 shares in the company, valued at $12,668,039.37. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. 40.30% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

VMware Profile

VMware, Inc provides software solutions in the areas of modern applications, cloud management and infrastructure, networking, security, and workspaces in the United States and internationally. It offers VMware multi-cloud solutions, including VMware vSphere, a data center infrastructure that provides the fundamental compute layer; and vSAN and VxRail, which offers holistic data storage and protection options to applications running on vSphere; as well as VMware Cloud Foundation, a cloud platform that combines its vSphere, vSAN, and NSX with VMware Aria Cloud Management into an integrated stack that delivers ready cloud infrastructure for private and public clouds.