Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Board Declares Stock Repurchase Plan

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase plan on Tuesday, May 7th, RTT News reports. The company plans to buyback $1.20 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the technology company to purchase up to 1.4% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are generally an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Arista Networks Trading Down 1.7 %

Shares of NYSE ANET opened at $273.97 on Wednesday. The company has a 50-day moving average of $279.22 and a two-hundred day moving average of $251.25. Arista Networks has a 1-year low of $133.42 and a 1-year high of $307.74. The company has a market cap of $85.65 billion, a PE ratio of 41.70, a P/E/G ratio of 2.33 and a beta of 1.13.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, February 12th. The technology company reported $2.08 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.70 by $0.38. The business had revenue of $1.54 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.53 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 35.62% and a return on equity of 31.44%. Arista Networks’s revenue for the quarter was up 20.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.25 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Arista Networks will post 6.74 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on ANET shares. Evercore ISI reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $300.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Wednesday, March 27th. Jefferies Financial Group upgraded shares of Arista Networks from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $240.00 to $320.00 in a report on Friday, May 3rd. Oppenheimer reaffirmed a “market perform” rating on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Tuesday, February 13th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and set a $320.00 price objective on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Tuesday, February 13th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price objective on Arista Networks from $297.00 to $315.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 11th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and seventeen have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $285.53.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 1,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, May 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $258.77, for a total value of $388,155.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 17,681 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $4,575,312.37. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other news, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 1,500 shares of Arista Networks stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, May 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $258.77, for a total value of $388,155.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 17,681 shares in the company, valued at $4,575,312.37. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, SVP Marc Taxay sold 1,044 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, May 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $254.54, for a total transaction of $265,739.76. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 337,054 shares of company stock valued at $96,529,086. 3.54% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

About Arista Networks

Arista Networks, Inc engages in the development, marketing, and sale of data-driven, client to cloud networking solutions for data center, campus, and routing environments in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. Its cloud networking solutions consist of Extensible Operating System (EOS), a publish-subscribe state-sharing networking operating system offered in combination with a set of network applications.