Stock Traders Buy High Volume of Call Options on Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG)

Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG) was the recipient of some unusual options trading on Monday. Stock traders acquired 17,210 call options on the company. This is an increase of 191% compared to the average daily volume of 5,910 call options.

Insider Buying and Selling at Pure Storage

In other Pure Storage news, insider Ajay Singh sold 7,178 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $67.14, for a total value of $481,930.92. Following the transaction, the insider owned 215,091 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $14,441,209.74. The trade was a 3.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider John Colgrove sold 100,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, December 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $71.31, for a total value of $7,131,000.00. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last quarter, insiders sold 307,178 shares of company stock valued at $26,020,931. Corporate insiders own 5.60% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Pure Storage

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Versant Capital Management Inc increased its stake in shares of Pure Storage by 8.3% in the 3rd quarter. Versant Capital Management Inc now owns 1,598 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $134,000 after acquiring an additional 122 shares during the last quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC grew its holdings in Pure Storage by 40.1% during the third quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC now owns 468 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $39,000 after purchasing an additional 134 shares during the period. One Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Pure Storage by 1.0% in the third quarter. One Capital Management LLC now owns 14,750 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $1,236,000 after purchasing an additional 141 shares in the last quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd increased its stake in Pure Storage by 0.3% in the third quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd now owns 43,756 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $3,667,000 after purchasing an additional 152 shares in the last quarter. Finally, State of Wyoming raised its holdings in Pure Storage by 10.3% in the third quarter. State of Wyoming now owns 1,673 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $140,000 after purchasing an additional 156 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 83.42% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have weighed in on PSTG. TD Cowen boosted their target price on shares of Pure Storage from $85.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, December 3rd. Susquehanna set a $105.00 price objective on shares of Pure Storage in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. UBS Group upped their price objective on Pure Storage from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Wall Street Zen upgraded Pure Storage from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, December 20th. Finally, Piper Sandler set a $92.00 target price on Pure Storage and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, September 25th. Thirteen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Pure Storage has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $95.26.

Pure Storage Stock Up 8.0%

PSTG stock traded up $5.38 during midday trading on Monday, reaching $72.36. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 3,212,511 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,600,814. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $77.14 and its 200-day simple moving average is $74.20. Pure Storage has a 52 week low of $34.51 and a 52 week high of $100.59. The stock has a market cap of $23.89 billion, a PE ratio of 190.34, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 7.44 and a beta of 1.26.

Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) last posted its quarterly earnings results 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 company had revenue of $763.77 million for the quarter. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Pure Storage will post 0.44 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Pure Storage Company Profile

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.