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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for NetApp, Inc. (NTAP) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-08-23): Designation Watch · Gem Score -12 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 65 · Value -75 · Sentiment 34 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $90.82 vs $192.27 at analysis
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NetApp, Inc.
NTAP NASDAQNetApp, Inc. is a data infrastructure and cloud solutions company that provides enterprises with technologies to manage, store, protect, and optimize their data across on-premises and multi-cloud environments. The company offers hardware storage systems, all-flash arrays, and converged infrastructure, alongside a broad portfolio of software-defined storage, data management, and cloud data services. NetApp focuses on enabling customers to run applications efficiently, support data-intensive workloads, and integrate with major public cloud providers for hybrid and multicloud architectures. Its solutions are used across sectors such as technology, financial services, healthcare, government, and manufacturing to support analytics, databases, virtualized environments, and modern application development. Founded in 1992 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, NetApp, Inc. plays a significant role in the enterprise IT landscape by helping organizations maximize the value, performance, and availability of their data while maintaining governance and security across complex, distributed infrastructures.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 6.35
Total Equity: $1.35B
Shares: 201,000,000
Total Debt: $2.49B
Cash: $2.07B
EBITDA: $1.85B
Total Debt: $2.49B
Cash: $2.07B
Revenue: $6.24B
Revenue: $6.24B
Revenue: $6.24B
Total Equity: $1.35B
Tax Rate: 22.6%
Equity: $1.35B
Total Debt: $2.49B
Cash: $2.07B
Current Liabilities: $4.02B
Long-Term Debt: $2.49B
Total Debt: $2.49B
Total Equity: $1.35B
Shares: 201,000,000
Shares: 201,000,000
CapEx: -$198.00M
Shares: 201,000,000
Stock Price: $192.28
Net Income: $1.28B
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 22, 2026 4:44pm (1d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | — | — | $5.7B | $5.9B | $6.2B |
| Cost of Revenue | $2.1B | $2.2B | $1.2B | $1.3B | $1.3B |
| Gross Profit | $4.2B | $4.2B | $4.4B | $4.6B | $4.9B |
| Operating Expenses | $3.1B | $3.2B | $3.2B | $3.3B | $3.2B |
| Operating Income | $1.2B | $1.0B | $1.2B | $1.3B | $1.7B |
| Net Income | $937.0M | $1.3B | $986.0M | $1.2B | $1.3B |
| EBITDA | $1.3B | $1.2B | $1.4B | $1.5B | $1.9B |
| EPS | $4.20 | $5.87 | $4.74 | $5.81 | $6.41 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $4.09 | $5.79 | $4.63 | $5.67 | $6.35 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 22, 2026 4:28pm (1d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $4.1B | $2.3B | $1.9B | $2.7B | $2.1B |
| Total Current Assets | $5.9B | $4.7B | $4.9B | $5.9B | $5.8B |
| Total Assets | $10.0B | $9.8B | $9.9B | $10.8B | $10.7B |
| Current Liabilities | $4.0B | $3.5B | $4.1B | $4.7B | $4.0B |
| Long-Term Debt | $2.4B | $2.4B | $2.0B | $2.5B | $2.5B |
| Total Liabilities | $9.2B | $8.7B | $8.7B | $9.8B | $9.4B |
| Total Equity | $838.0M | $1.2B | $1.1B | $1.0B | $1.4B |
| Retained Earnings | $122.0M | $265.0M | $208.0M | $0 | $153.0M |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 22, 2026 4:44pm (1d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $1.2B | $1.1B | $1.7B | $1.5B | $2.1B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$226.0M | -$239.0M | -$155.0M | -$168.0M | -$198.0M |
| Free Cash Flow | $985.0M | $868.0M | $1.5B | $1.3B | $1.9B |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$380.0M | -$491.0M | $0 | $0 | — |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | $0 | -$250.0M | $0 | -$400.0M | -$750.0M |
| Dividends Paid | -$446.0M | -$432.0M | -$416.0M | -$424.0M | -$413.0M |
| Stock Buybacks | -$600.0M | -$850.0M | -$900.0M | -$1.2B | -$950.0M |
| Net Change in Cash | -$416.0M | -$1.8B | -$413.0M | $840.0M | -$674.0M |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 22, 2026 4:44pm (1d ago)| Metric | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | — | — | +4.4% | +5.6% |
| Gross Profit Growth | -0.3% | +5.3% | +4.1% | +6.2% |
| Operating Income Growth | -12.0% | +19.3% | +10.1% | +25.2% |
| Net Income Growth | +36.0% | -22.6% | +20.3% | +7.6% |
| EBITDA Growth | -8.1% | +17.8% | +8.6% | +20.9% |
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 22, 2026 4:28pm (1d ago)| Date | Dividend | Declaration | Record | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-10 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2026-04-02 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2026-01-02 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2025-10-03 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2025-07-03 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2025-04-04 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2025-01-03 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2024-10-04 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2024-07-05 | $0.52 | — | — | — |
| 2024-04-04 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2024-01-04 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2023-10-05 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2023-07-06 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2023-04-05 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2023-01-05 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2022-10-06 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2022-07-07 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2022-04-07 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2022-01-06 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
| 2021-10-07 | $0.50 | — | — | — |
Deep Analysis
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
Growth Outlook
Analyzed 2026-08-22 16:52The question every valuation on this page silently assumes: is this company likely to grow? Judged forward — the business, its category, the world — against what's already printed.
Claude Reading
The raw numbers tell a mature, mid-single-digit growth story dressed up in cloud-transition clothing. Revenue grew from $5.66B (FY24) to $5.91B (FY25) to $6.24B (FY26) — a 5% CAGR that would be unremarkable if not for the 30x P/E. What's more troubling is the quarterly cadence: the Q4 FY26 print of $1.26B with a 32% net margin is jarringly out of pattern versus the $1.56-$1.71B range of the prior three quarters — either there's a seasonal reset I'm missing or the mix shifted dramatically (deferred revenue release, one-time item, tax benefit). The 32% margin is not repeatable; strip it out and TTM net margin sits closer to the 17-20% range the other quarters show. Recent YoY revenue growth of 5.6% and earnings YoY of 7.6% are decelerating, not accelerating, which directly contradicts the multiple.
The balance sheet is thin in a way that's underappreciated. Total equity of $1.35B against $2.49B of debt gives a D/E of 1.84 and drives the eye-popping 94% ROE and 73% ROIC — these are leverage artifacts, not evidence of a capital-light platform monopoly. The 28.6x P/B is essentially meaningless for the same reason: NetApp has been buying back stock aggressively, shrinking book value, which mechanically inflates return metrics. FCF of $1.87B on a $37.7B market cap is a ~5% FCF yield — respectable, but not cheap for a business growing 5% with no obvious inflection. At a more defensible 15-18x FCF multiple for a low-growth hardware-adjacent business, you get $28-34B market cap, or roughly $140-170/share — below current, above the synthesis DCF.
I largely agree with the synthesis direction but think the $95 fair value is too punitive. The DCF appears to be underweighting the sticky, recurring nature of Keystone/cloud services revenue and the disciplined capital return (32% payout, ongoing buybacks). A fair value in the $140-160 range feels more defensible than $95 — the stock is overvalued, but not 50% overvalued. The Market Forces call of "value trap masquerading as turnaround" is sharper than the synthesis: I'd note NetApp has been telling the hybrid-cloud story for a decade, and the 5% revenue CAGR is the honest verdict on how that transition has progressed. The narrative layer correctly flags the +102% premium to DCF as "anchored but stretched" — that's the right framing. Insider activity is uninformative — small option-exercise sales, no meaningful buying, which is neutral-to-mildly-negative for a stock at all-time-highs territory.
The contrarian case worth taking seriously: NetApp has genuinely won share in AI/ML training data pipelines (ONTAP AI, NVIDIA partnerships), and if enterprise AI capex accelerates in 2026-27, storage-adjacent players benefit before the picks-and-shovels narrative reaches them. If revenue growth re-accelerates to 8-10% with margin expansion to 22-24% net, current multiples look defensible. But that's a bet, not a base case, and the decelerating quarterly trend argues against it. The Q4 anomaly needs explanation before any bull case can be built — a 32% margin quarter following three sub-20% quarters is either a gift that won't repeat or an accounting artifact that will reverse. I dissent from the synthesis's magnitude (too bearish at $95) but agree on direction: this is overvalued, and the risk/reward at $192 is asymmetric to the downside because the narrative premium requires execution NetApp hasn't demonstrated in a decade of trying.
GPT Reading
At $192, NetApp is being valued like a higher-quality growth infrastructure name than the actual numbers justify. The business is good, profitable, and improving, but the scale of the premium is hard to defend. Fiscal 2026 revenue was $6.24 billion, up 5.6% from $5.91 billion, while net income rose to $1.28 billion from $1.19 billion. That is respectable, not transformative. The more important point is the shape of the model: gross margin is an excellent 78.6%, operating margin reached 26.8%, and free cash flow was $1.87 billion, or roughly 30% of revenue. This is a mature cash machine with some growth, not a business entering a new hypergrowth phase. On that base, the market is paying 30.3x earnings, 6.2x sales, and 20.9x EV/EBITDA. For a company growing revenue about 5% and earnings in the low teens, those multiples are stretched.
The quarterly pattern reinforces that this is still a seasonal, somewhat lumpy infrastructure vendor rather than a clean recurring software comp deserving a premium software multiple. April quarter revenue was $1.26 billion versus $1.07 billion a year earlier, but that follows January and October quarters both at $1.71 billion and July at $1.56 billion. Net income margins swing from 14.9% in July 2025 to 32.1% in April 2026 and 31.9% in April 2025, which says more about mix, buybacks, tax items, or seasonal operating leverage than about a steadily compounding SaaS model. Annual profit quality is real — operating cash flow of $2.07 billion comfortably exceeded net income of $1.28 billion — but that strength is already fully capitalized. At the current market cap of $37.7 billion, the stock trades around 20x free cash flow. That is not insane in absolute terms, but it is rich for a company with modest top-line expansion and ongoing exposure to legacy storage dynamics.
The balance sheet also argues against paying up too aggressively. Net debt is manageable at roughly $420 million, but equity is only $1.35 billion, which makes the 28.6x price-to-book and 94% ROE look more optical than economic; this is a buyback-compressed equity base, not evidence of a software monopoly. Debt to equity at 1.84 is fine given the cash generation, yet it undercuts any simplistic “fortress balance sheet deserving scarcity premium” argument. The insider tape is not alarming, but it is not supportive either: recent activity is dominated by option exercises and small sales, not open-market conviction buying at these levels. Put differently, I see an excellent operator harvesting a high-margin niche, but the stock price implies the cloud/data infrastructure repositioning will deliver a longer runway and greater multiple durability than the raw growth profile shows.
The best pushback is that the market may be rationally paying for quality, not growth. NetApp has taken revenue from $5.66 billion in fiscal 2024 to $6.24 billion in fiscal 2026 while expanding operating income from $1.21 billion to $1.67 billion; that margin gain is meaningful. Earnings have compounded faster than sales, free cash flow quality is strong, and a 1.1% dividend plus continuing repurchases can make a low-growth business highly attractive if margins keep widening. A bull would also note that if hybrid cloud and data services keep lifting mix, today’s 26.8% operating margin may not be peak, and 30x earnings can compress quickly if EPS keeps compounding at a mid-teens rate. I weigh that differently because the stock is already priced for that favorable path. When a mature infrastructure company trades at more than 6x revenue, you need either sustained double-digit revenue growth or a credible path to much higher recurring revenue and margin durability; the briefing does not show that yet.
What would change my mind is straightforward: I would need to see revenue growth reaccelerate from mid-single digits to at least 8-10% for several quarters while holding operating margin above 25%, or free cash flow move sustainably above $2.2 billion without financial engineering driving the story. If the next few quarters show revenue materially above the recent $1.71 billion peak quarter run rate, with net margins staying near 20% rather than bouncing around the mid-teens outside the April quarter, then the premium multiple becomes easier to defend. Absent that, fair value is much lower than the current quote; I would need a price closer to $130-$145 to get constructive on the existing fundamentals.
Grok Reading
The numbers describe a high-quality mature infrastructure franchise that has already extracted most of the easy margin upside and is now being priced as if a second growth chapter is certain. Fiscal 2026 revenue of $6.24B is only 5.6% above the prior year’s $5.91B; the three mid-year quarters grew 1–4% year-over-year while the seasonally weak April quarter jumped 18% to $1.26B, which is encouraging but still leaves trailing growth in the mid-single digits. Earnings and free cash flow look better—net income $1.28B, operating margin 26.8%, FCF $1.87B on only $198M of capex—because gross margin sits at 78.5% and the company is an efficient converter of profit into cash. That $1.87B FCF against a $37.7B equity value produces a roughly 5% free-cash-flow yield. At 30× trailing earnings and 21× EV/EBITDA, the market is paying a pure-software multiple for mid-single-digit top-line growth and high-teens earnings growth that is largely margin-driven rather than volume-driven. The balance sheet is fine (net debt under $0.5B) but the 94% ROE and 28× price-to-book are optical artifacts of a shrunken $1.35B equity base, not evidence of a compounding growth machine.
What stands out is the gap between cash-flow reality and the multiple. Operating cash flow matched cash on the balance sheet at $2.07B; the business throws off cash with little reinvestment need. Yet revenue CAGR of 5% and recent quarterly deceleration outside one seasonal print do not support a 30× earnings multiple or a 6.2× sales multiple. The valuation synthesis fair value near $95 is aggressive on the low side—quality of FCF and sticky enterprise relationships deserve something closer to 18–20× earnings, call it $115–130—but even that leaves the stock 30–50% expensive at $192. The “hybrid cloud data services” narrative is doing the heavy lifting; the reported numbers have not yet shown the reacceleration that would justify embedding another decade of multiple expansion.
The strongest counter-argument is that the market is correctly capitalizing a durable software-mix shift that the trailing figures understate. April-quarter revenue acceleration, operating income rising from $1.34B to $1.67B year-over-year, and an earnings CAGR of 13.8% show real operating leverage. Gross margin near 79% and FCF conversion above 140% of net income are characteristic of a platform that has already escaped pure hardware commoditization; if cloud data services and AI-related unstructured data workloads continue to lift the mix, mid-teens earnings growth can persist longer than a simple 5% revenue CAGR implies. A skeptic of the cheap-fair-value camp would also note that EV/FCF around 20× is not outrageous for a sticky enterprise franchise with net-cash-like leverage and a 1.1% dividend that is only 32% of earnings. Those points have merit; I simply weigh the still-anemic organic growth and the absence of sustained double-digit revenue prints more heavily than the margin story. Paying 30× for execution that has so far delivered 5% sales growth is a bet on narrative, not on the ledger.
I would reverse to neutral or better only if two consecutive quarters show revenue growth reaccelerating through 10%+ with cloud/services mix explicitly lifting gross margin another 100–150 bp, or if fiscal 2027 guidance implies FCF above $2.2B while the multiple compresses toward 22–23× forward earnings. Persistent sub-6% growth or any sign that hyperscalers are taking share in the hybrid layer would confirm the overvaluation case.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
NetApp shows the profile of a well-run mature earner. Revenue is grinding higher (5.66B to 5.91B to 6.24B), gross margin sits in a rare band for hardware-inclusive infrastructure at ~78%, and operating margin has expanded meaningfully from 21.5% to 26.8% over three years — real operating leverage, not just cost cuts. FCF of $1.87B on $6.24B revenue is a ~30% FCF margin, and OCF/NI of 1.35x plus accruals of -3.7% of assets say the reported earnings are backed by cash, not accounting stretch. Beneish M at -2.78 and Altman Z at 3.72 corroborate clean books. Capital discipline is a genuine strength: diluted shares fell from 229M to 201M (-3.2% CAGR) with buybacks running 264% of SBC, so per-share economics are compounding faster than the top line. Net cash of $1.10B on $3.58B liquid cash means the buybacks and dividend are self-funded, not levered. Insider tape is neutral — small planned sales and option exercises with tax-withholding, no open-market buying but nothing alarming either. What keeps this from a higher rung is the growth profile and moat ambiguity. Revenue growth is mid-single-digit at best, net income in 2026 ($1.28B) has still not decisively exceeded 2023 ($1.27B), and NetApp competes in a storage market with credible pressure from Pure Storage, Dell, and hyperscaler-native storage. It is durable, but not obviously widening its moat.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Segment mix between hybrid cloud storage and public cloud services (growth vs. legacy)
- Customer concentration and any hyperscaler partnership dependencies
- Deferred revenue and RPO trend to gauge forward demand
- Whether the 26.8% operating margin includes any one-time benefits or restructuring reversals
- R&D spend as % of revenue and any capitalized software costs affecting FCF quality
Every valuation lens points the same direction: DCF at $92.91, EPV floor at $56.37, and an anchored P/E at $121.10 converge to a signal-adjusted fair value of $94.95 - roughly half the $192.27 price. Even the most generous of the three methods (anchored P/E) leaves ~37% downside. The composite implies a -51% gap, which is the kind of read you get when a mature, low-single-digit-growth storage franchise is being valued like a platform compounder. Earnings quality is high (score 3), so there is no haircut to hide behind - the deserved value is what it is. The Company-Quality lens grades this Strong (65), which nudges deserved value up, but not to $192. A cash-generative, share-shrinking storage franchise with inching revenue growth is a textbook mature earner - it deserves a fair multiple, not a platform multiple. To justify today's price you have to believe subscription/hybrid ARR inflects hard and durably reprices the whole stack. That is the bull narrative, and it appears fully in the price already.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Subscription/public-cloud ARR growth rate and gross margin trajectory in the next print
- Guidance on billings and deferred revenue - is the hybrid mix actually accelerating
- One-time items or tax benefits inflating trailing EPS that feed the anchored-P/E number
- Capital return pace (buyback authorization use) that could compress share count faster than modeled
NetApp is riding a platform-monopoly narrative with strong intensity: the market has embraced the hybrid-cloud plus AI-data story, and the May 2026 blowout print (a 22-35% single-day gap) crystallized that narrative into price. That prior surge is doing ongoing work on sentiment, anchoring the stock near $192 well above any DCF-based fair value because holders are paying for narrative continuation, not cash flows. Oppenheimer's pre-print call for a beat and raise is exactly the kind of sell-side reinforcement that keeps momentum names bid into a catalyst. The macro tape is mildly risk-on but fragile (VIX 15, S&P just off highs, 10y at 4.69%), and with a 1.43 beta NTAP is more exposed to tape shifts than a defensive infra name should be. A -5% single-session drop on Aug 19 in an up market hints that positioning is crowded and reactive - the story is working but the stock trades like a high-beta AI derivative, not a boring storage box. Net: tailwind from narrative and analyst tone, partially checked by macro fragility and the fact that the easy narrative re-rate has already happened.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Fiscal Q1 print vs the Oppenheimer beat-and-raise setup - a mere in-line result would puncture the narrative
- Any hyperscaler commentary reframing on-prem/hybrid storage as commoditized
- VIX behavior and 10y yield - a break above 17 VIX or 4.85% yield would disproportionately hit this beta profile
- Whether AI-data workload disclosures actually accelerate subscription revenue growth or stay in the marketing layer
The world is spending more on data infrastructure than ever, but the spend is migrating to where the compute is — hyperscaler-native storage tiers and GPU-adjacent parallel filesystems. NetApp's structural bet is that enterprises keep a governed, on-prem/hybrid copy of their data for cost, sovereignty and latency reasons, and that ONTAP's ubiquity makes it the default control plane for that copy. That bet is holding: the installed base isn't leaving, and the first-party cloud services turn the migration into an annuity rather than a loss. What it does not do is put NetApp in the AI-buildout fast lane; the AI storage dollars concentrating around training clusters are mostly going elsewhere. Meanwhile the memory cost cycle has flipped from tailwind to headwind, which pressures the hardware margin that funds the software transition. Net: a durable, cash-generative franchise growing with enterprise IT budgets, not with AI.
When we made this prediction on Aug 23, 2026, NTAP was $192.27. We expect it to be $174.00 by Feb 2027, and we consider it great value under $115.00. This is an early model (v0.6.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Aug 23, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.