Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Stock Price Down 5.3% – Time to Sell?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) traded down 5.3% during trading on Thursday . The company traded as low as $156.08 and last traded at $156.5530. 7,824,824 shares changed hands during trading, an increase of 41% from the average session volume of 5,564,372 shares. The stock had previously closed at $165.29.

Key Headlines Impacting Snowflake

Here are the key news stories impacting Snowflake this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Snowflake announced a multi‑year, roughly $200M partnership with OpenAI to embed advanced models into Snowflake’s platform — a revenue opportunity if customers run models on Snowflake data and pay for compute/consumption. OpenAI partnership
• Positive Sentiment: Enterprise adoption example — United Rentals has rolled out a Snowflake‑built Business Intelligence AI agent across 1,600+ branches, showing near‑term real customer use of Snowflake Intelligence that could increase consumption. United Rentals deployment
• Positive Sentiment: New AI product moves (Cortex Code, Semantic View Autopilot, Postgres integrations) broaden use cases and reduce friction for customers — strategically supportive of longer‑term consumption growth if execution follows through. Fool on Snowflake product momentum
• Neutral Sentiment: Market commentary is mixed: analysts and stories acknowledge the strategic logic of model partnerships but emphasize investors want clear evidence of profitable consumption growth rather than press releases. Market analysis on OpenAI deal
• Negative Sentiment: Zacks Research downgraded Snowflake from “hold” to “strong sell” — a fresh sell‑side hit that can accelerate outflows and push momentum traders to reduce exposure. Zacks downgrade
• Negative Sentiment: Johnson Fistel announced an investigation into whether Snowflake or its officers complied with securities laws — legal/settlement risk increases uncertainty and can pressure the stock until resolved. Johnson Fistel investigation notice
• Negative Sentiment: Insider selling: EVP Christian Kleinerman disclosed a sale of 10,000 shares — insider sales can be interpreted as added near‑term supply and raise short‑term concern even if not uncommon. SEC Form 4 — Kleinerman sale
• Negative Sentiment: Overall price action: analysts and reports note SNOW is falling more than the broader market amid profit‑taking and skepticism about near‑term margins if customers run large models — that dynamic is amplifying the move lower. Zacks on SNOW downside

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts recently commented on SNOW shares. Monness Crespi & Hardt raised their price target on shares of Snowflake from $260.00 to $275.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Argus upgraded shares of Snowflake from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 target price for the company in a research report on Thursday, January 8th. UBS Group restated a “buy” rating on shares of Snowflake in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Evercore ISI upped their price target on shares of Snowflake from $280.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, December 4th. Finally, Bank of America lifted their price objective on Snowflake from $280.00 to $310.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, November 17th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have issued a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and four have given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $275.58.

Snowflake Price Performance

The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $219.07 and its 200 day simple moving average is $227.23. The company has a quick ratio of 1.37, a current ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.07. The stock has a market capitalization of $53.57 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -38.75 and a beta of 1.14.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 3rd. The company reported $0.35 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.31 by $0.04. Snowflake had a negative return on equity of 45.91% and a negative net margin of 30.76%.The company had revenue of $1.21 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.18 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $0.20 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 28.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts forecast that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.36 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In related news, Director Frank Slootman sold 200,000 shares of Snowflake stock in a transaction on Thursday, December 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $221.83, for a total value of $44,366,000.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 50,329 shares in the company, valued at $11,164,482.07. This trade represents a 79.89% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $249.53, for a total transaction of $2,495,300.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 512,450 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $127,871,648.50. This trade represents a 1.91% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 613,681 shares of company stock worth $135,245,745. 6.80% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Snowflake

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in SNOW. Total Clarity Wealth Management Inc. increased its position in Snowflake by 2.7% during the third quarter. Total Clarity Wealth Management Inc. now owns 1,508 shares of the company’s stock worth $340,000 after acquiring an additional 40 shares during the period. Diligent Investors LLC boosted its holdings in Snowflake by 0.9% in the 3rd quarter. Diligent Investors LLC now owns 4,594 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,036,000 after purchasing an additional 40 shares during the period. Coastline Trust Co grew its position in Snowflake by 1.0% in the 3rd quarter. Coastline Trust Co now owns 4,183 shares of the company’s stock worth $943,000 after purchasing an additional 42 shares during the last quarter. Wedbush Securities Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 1.3% during the 2nd quarter. Wedbush Securities Inc. now owns 3,717 shares of the company’s stock worth $832,000 after purchasing an additional 48 shares during the period. Finally, Avion Wealth increased its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 76.6% during the 2nd quarter. Avion Wealth now owns 113 shares of the company’s stock worth $25,000 after purchasing an additional 49 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 65.10% of the company’s stock.

About Snowflake

Snowflake Inc is a cloud-native data platform company that provides a suite of services for storing, processing and analyzing large volumes of data. Its core offering, often described as the Snowflake Data Cloud, combines data warehousing, data lake and data sharing capabilities in a single managed service delivered across major public cloud providers. The platform is designed to support analytics, data engineering, data science and application workloads with a focus on scalability, concurrency and simplified administration.

Key products and capabilities include a multi-cluster, shared-data architecture that separates compute from storage; continuous data ingestion and streaming; support for structured and semi-structured data formats; tools for data governance, security and compliance; and developer frameworks for building data applications.