NetApp shares climbed on Monday, after receiving a rating upgrade and a price target hike from Cowen.
Analysts at Cowen boosted their rating on the hybrid cloud data services/management company’s stock to market perform from underperform. Also, they raised their price target on the shares to $45 from $40. According to Cowen analysts,the negative news that led the stock to lose about -20% in August already has been priced into the stock.
However, the analysts did express concern over NetApp’s near-term headwinds such as competition from market incumbents and nascent storage players for product share gain.
But Cowen’s outlook on NetApp is largely optimistic for the long-term. They indicated that NTAP's leadership in hybrid cloud purpose-built storage systems and data management software should help the company generate low-single digit revenue growth and high-single digit EPS growth through 2020. They also praised NetApp’s “industry-leading profitability and capital return to shareholders”.