Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) Trading 9.6% Higher – Should You Buy?

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) shares were up 9.6% during mid-day trading on Monday . The company traded as high as $173.81 and last traded at $175.3870. 1,577,381 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 82% from the average daily volume of 8,702,636 shares. The stock had previously closed at $159.99.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts recently issued reports on ANET shares. Citigroup dropped their price objective on shares of Arista Networks from $176.00 to $173.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. TD Cowen reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $200.00 target price (up from $170.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. Wolfe Research reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $175.00 price target on shares of Arista Networks in a research note on Wednesday, June 10th. Needham & Company LLC restated a “buy” rating and set a $185.00 price target on shares of Arista Networks in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. Finally, Barclays reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $195.00 price target (up from $184.00) on shares of Arista Networks in a research report on Thursday, May 7th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-one have given a Buy rating and two have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Arista Networks presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $187.63.

Arista Networks Stock Up 8.3%

The firm has a market capitalization of $218.18 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 59.34, a PEG ratio of 2.47 and a beta of 1.60. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $159.07 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $144.04.

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, May 5th. The technology company reported $0.87 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.81 by $0.06. The firm had revenue of $2.71 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.62 billion. Arista Networks had a net margin of 38.32% and a return on equity of 30.10%. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 35.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $0.65 EPS. Arista Networks has set its Q2 2026 guidance at 0.880-0.880 EPS. Sell-side analysts anticipate that Arista Networks, Inc. will post 3.27 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, major shareholder Andreas Bechtolsheim sold 260,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, June 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $165.57, for a total transaction of $43,048,200.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider directly owned 182,543,048 shares in the company, valued at $30,223,652,457.36. This trade represents a 0.14% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Jayshree Ullal sold 428,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, April 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $177.44, for a total value of $75,944,320.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer owned 5,209,207 shares in the company, valued at $924,321,690.08. This represents a 7.59% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 2,639,080 shares of company stock worth $430,322,162 over the last 90 days. 2.70% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Arista Networks

Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in ANET. Knuff & Co LLC acquired a new position in shares of Arista Networks in the third quarter valued at approximately $29,000. Board of the Pension Protection Fund purchased a new position in Arista Networks in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Sankala Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of Arista Networks in the fourth quarter worth $27,000. Prosperity Bancshares Inc purchased a new stake in shares of Arista Networks during the fourth quarter worth $28,000. Finally, Main Street Group LTD purchased a new stake in shares of Arista Networks during the first quarter worth $26,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.47% of the company’s stock.

About Arista Networks

Arista Networks, Inc is a technology company that designs and sells cloud networking solutions for large-scale data centers and enterprise environments. The company is best known for its high-performance switching and routing platforms, which are used to build scalable, low-latency networks for cloud service providers, internet companies, financial services, telecommunications, and enterprise IT. Arista’s offerings emphasize programmability, automation and telemetry to support modern, software-driven network architectures.

Central to Arista’s product portfolio is its Extensible Operating System (EOS), a modular network operating system that provides consistent programmability, stateful control and advanced visibility across the company’s hardware platforms.