Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Shares Up 7.5% – Still a Buy?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) rose 7.5% on Friday . The stock traded as high as $170.39 and last traded at $168.50. Approximately 9,601,052 shares were traded during trading, an increase of 68% from the average daily volume of 5,703,095 shares. The stock had previously closed at $156.71.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research analysts have issued reports on the company. Robert W. Baird lifted their target price on Snowflake from $260.00 to $270.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Citigroup dropped their price target on Snowflake from $310.00 to $300.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, December 8th. Cantor Fitzgerald boosted their price objective on Snowflake from $275.00 to $278.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Piper Sandler reiterated an “overweight” rating and issued a $285.00 target price on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Finally, Sanford C. Bernstein restated a “market perform” rating and set a $237.00 price target on shares of Snowflake in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have issued a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $275.58.

Snowflake Stock Up 7.5%

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.07, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a current ratio of 1.37. The company has a market cap of $57.66 billion, a P/E ratio of -41.71 and a beta of 1.14. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $217.23 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $226.74.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, December 3rd. The company reported $0.35 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 firm had revenue of $1.21 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.18 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $0.20 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 28.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts anticipate that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.36 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, Director Michael L. Speiser sold 50,338 shares of Snowflake stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, December 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $230.65, for a total transaction of $11,610,459.70. Following the transaction, the director owned 32,756 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,555,171.40. The trade was a 60.58% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, December 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $249.53, for a total value of $2,495,300.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 512,450 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $127,871,648.50. The trade was a 1.91% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold a total of 562,940 shares of company stock worth $122,190,090 over the last 90 days. Company insiders own 6.80% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Snowflake by 5.1% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,095,687 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,601,790,000 after purchasing an additional 1,448,094 shares during the period. Jennison Associates LLC increased its holdings in Snowflake by 27.7% during the fourth quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 11,603,302 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,545,300,000 after buying an additional 2,519,413 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp raised its position in Snowflake by 1.4% in the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 6,887,073 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,541,120,000 after acquiring an additional 94,293 shares during the period. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership boosted its stake in Snowflake by 15.2% in the second quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership now owns 4,951,715 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,108,045,000 after acquiring an additional 652,485 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its position in shares of Snowflake by 3.1% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,424,120 shares of the company’s stock valued at $986,057,000 after acquiring an additional 133,059 shares during the period. 65.10% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.