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Analysts update Pure Storage stock price target after earnings
Each week on the 1950s-1960s TV quiz show "What's My Line?" panelists donned blindfolds and tried to identify the "mystery guest."
These guest visitors included such show-business giants as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.
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The data-storage company Pure Storage ( PSTG ) recently had a kind of mystery guest of its own, in the form of an unidentified hyperscaler, a large-scale data center that specializes in delivering massive amounts of computing power and storage capacity.
Pure Storage made the announcement along with the report of its third-quarter results, which beat analysts' expectations.
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And while the company didn't name the hyperscaler in question, the top four names in the business are Microsoft ( MSFT ) , Amazon ( AMZN ) , Facebook parent Meta Platforms ( META ) , and Google ( GOOGL ) , Alphabet's search-engine giant.
Pure Storage CEO touts first-ever design win
"We have been engaged on achieving a significant hyperscaler design win by year-end, and I am pleased to announce that we signed a design win with a top four hyperscaler in the last few weeks," Chief Executive Charlie Giancarlo told investors on the earnings call .
"This is the first-ever design win to provide flash for standard hyperscaler storage, and it is the vanguard for flash storage providing all online storage in major hyperscale environments in the future," he added.
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In addition to providing cost-effective data storage, Giancarlo said, the top four hyperscalers' use of Pure Storage technology is expected to free up significant amounts of power and space in their data centers.
It is also expected to significantly reduce the failure rates and maintenance costs associated with legacy disk storage, while doubling the expected lifetime of storage infrastructure, he said.
"With this win, Pure is entering an exciting new hyperscale market," Giancarlo said. "The design win itself signals that this top-four hyperscaler’s future data centers are approved to use Pure’s technology as their data-storage standard."
Giancarlo said artificial intelligence was creating several key opportunities for the company, adding that “we continue to provide leading-edge high-performance storage for public and private [graphics-processing-unit] farms in machine learning and training environments.”
During the past quarter, he said, Pure Storage was certified for the Nvidia ( NVDA ) DGX SuperPOD architecture, which is designed to provide turnkey infrastructure for the world’s largest training environments.
Pure Storage also recently announced a strategic investment partnership with the cloud-computing company CoreWeave.
PSTG reported quarterly adjusted earnings of 50 cents a share on revenue of $831 million, beating Wall Street’s calls for 41 cents and $815 million.
A year earlier Pure Storage earned an adjusted 50 cents a share on revenue of $763 million.
Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Pure Storage projected $867 million in revenue, above the $856 million expected. The Santa Clara, Calif., company also raised full-year guidance to $3.15 billion from $3 billion.
Pure Storage's shares are up nearly 82% year-to-date and up almost 97% from a year ago.
Analyst says Pure Storage is set up to drive revenue
Several investment firms adjusted their price targets for Pure Storage following the earnings report.
Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson, who has an outperform rating on the company, raised his price target to $75 from $70.
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“Pure Storage results and guidance were something of a mixed bag (better revenues but lighter margins)," Bryson said in a research note.
But investors focused "solely on Pure Storage's announcement that they have won a program with a top-tier hyperscale data-center operator that will see that customer incorporate Pure Storage software and DirectFlash Modules.”
Piper Sandler upgraded Pure Storage to overweight from neutral with a price target of $76, up from $56.
The company's fiscal Q3 results were better than expected given traditional sales. Lead metrics, those indicating future performance, struggled, the investment firm said.
But Piper Sandler also said Pure Storage's design win with the top-four cloud hyperscaler “removes risk and creates a catalyst for upside ahead.”
The opportunity with the hyperscaler alone represents a $500 million opportunity in 2026, and more hyperscalers could be coming, the investment firm contended.
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Needham raised its price target on Pure Storage to $75 from $62 and affirmed a buy rating on the shares after its Q3 earnings beat.
The design win with the top 4 hyperscaler stole the show from the results and was in line with CEO Giancarlo's expectation for securing a design win during the year, the investment firm said.
Pure Storage management also anticipates meaningful revenue contribution in fiscal 2027, when the hyperscaler shifts to double-digit exabyte production deployments, the firm added. (An exabyte of data is 1 quintillion bytes.)
Evercore ISI raised the firm's price target on Pure Storage to $75 from $70 and maintained an outperform rating on the shares.
October-end quarter numbers "were good," but the trajectory of the stock will be driven heavily by the company's ability to scale its Top 4 cloud win into sizable revenue in calendar 2026 and beyond, the investment firm said.
While "a lot of crisp execution" is needed going forward, Evercore said, Pure Storage is set up to speed increases in revenue and gross-profit dollars over the next several years.
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