UPDATE: Brean Capital Reiterates Buy Rating, Raises PT on NetApp on Branded Growth Strategy

In a report published Thursday, Brean Capital analyst Ananda Baruah reiterated a Buy rating on

, and raised the price target from $45.00 to $47.00. In the report, Brean Capital noted, “We remain Buy rated on NTAP following last night's Oct Q results and are raising our TP to $47 (from $45) as we continue to believe NTAP's solid balance sheet and cash flow generation will underpin a consistent capital return program beyond May '15 (which is the expected completion date of NTAP's $1B buyback program). Importantly, we believe NTAP's ability to continue its aggressive capital return program backstops the company's underlying business model of cultivating ONTAP adoption, expanding its Flash footprint, and managing costs responsibly. In fact, we believe new products announced at Insight (i.e. Cloud ONTAP), as well as the acquisition of SteelStore speak to the company's focused cloud strategy. Our $47 TP is 12x our FY'16 EPS of $3.25 - excluding the ~$8 in net-cash we believe NTAP will maintain in FY'16.” NetApp closed on Wednesday at $42.31.