Investors Buy Large Volume of Put Options on VMware (NYSE:VMW)

VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) was the target of unusually large options trading on Tuesday. Traders acquired 14,382 put options on the stock. This is an increase of approximately 82% compared to the average daily volume of 7,900 put options.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

VMW has been the topic of several research reports. UBS Group upped their price objective on VMware from $180.00 to $182.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, September 1st. BMO Capital Markets increased their target price on VMware from $140.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a report on Friday, September 1st. Monness Crespi & Hardt cut VMware from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a report on Monday, August 28th. Mizuho increased their target price on VMware from $158.00 to $165.00 in a report on Friday, September 1st. Finally, StockNews.com assumed coverage on VMware in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a “strong-buy” rating for the company. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, VMware currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $160.25.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, EVP Jean Pierre Brulard sold 5,779 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $178.29, for a total transaction 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 sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. 40.30% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VMware

Several hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of VMW. Financial Gravity Asset Management Inc. bought a new stake in shares of VMware in the second quarter valued at approximately $275,000. International Assets Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in VMware during the third quarter valued at approximately $31,000. Monetary Management Group Inc. raised its position in VMware by 113.6% during the third quarter. Monetary Management Group Inc. now owns 188 shares of the virtualization software provider’s stock valued at $31,000 after purchasing an additional 100 shares in the last quarter. BOKF NA acquired a new position in VMware during the second quarter valued at approximately $28,000. Finally, Trivant Custom Portfolio Group LLC acquired a new position in VMware during the first quarter valued at approximately $25,000. 46.70% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

VMware Stock Performance

NYSE:VMW traded down $7.00 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $142.91. The stock had a trading volume of 550,968 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,566,164. VMware has a twelve month low of $109.00 and a twelve month high of $181.14. The stock has a market cap of $61.71 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 45.31 and a beta of 0.71. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $158.97 and its 200 day simple moving average is $151.21. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.71, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current 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 (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.71 by $0.12. The business had revenue of $3.41 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.45 billion. VMware had a net margin of 10.48% and a return on equity of 113.34%. VMware’s revenue was up 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted $0.99 EPS. On average, equities research analysts forecast that VMware will post 4.92 earnings per share for the current year.

VMware Company 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.