Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Shares Gap Up – Should You Buy?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW)’s stock price gapped up before the market opened on Thursday . The stock had previously closed at $139.74, but opened at $153.43. Snowflake shares last traded at $151.9040, with a volume of 3,190,051 shares.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on SNOW. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their target price on Snowflake from $268.00 to $245.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, February 26th. Morgan Stanley decreased their target price on Snowflake from $270.00 to $245.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. DA Davidson decreased their target price on Snowflake from $300.00 to $250.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Royal Bank Of Canada set a $245.00 target price on Snowflake in a research report on Wednesday, February 11th. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $250.00 target price on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Monday, February 23rd. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-three have issued a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $242.19.

Snowflake Stock Performance

The company has a quick ratio of 1.30, a current ratio of 1.30 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18. The company has a 50 day moving average of $157.00 and a 200 day moving average of $200.44. The firm has a market cap of $52.63 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -38.54 and a beta of 1.08.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, February 25th. The company reported $0.32 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.27 by $0.05. Snowflake had a negative return on equity of 50.61% and a negative net margin of 28.43%.The business had revenue of $1.28 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.25 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $0.30 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 30.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.16 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, SVP Vivek Raghunathan sold 3,876 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, April 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $152.80, for a total value of $592,252.80. Following the transaction, the senior vice president owned 273,323 shares in the company, valued at approximately $41,763,754.40. The trade was a 1.40% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Michael L. Speiser sold 50,338 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $175.19, for a total value of $8,818,714.22. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 30,236 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,297,044.84. This trade represents a 62.47% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last ninety days, insiders have sold 384,313 shares of company stock worth $64,308,373. 6.80% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Snowflake

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the company. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. raised its stake in Snowflake by 12.6% during the first quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 26,213 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,953,000 after buying an additional 2,937 shares in the last quarter. Andra AP fonden raised its stake in Snowflake by 2.7% during the first quarter. Andra AP fonden now owns 49,295 shares of the company’s stock valued at $7,435,000 after buying an additional 1,300 shares in the last quarter. Wilkerson Advisory Group LLC raised its stake in Snowflake by 1,035.9% during the first quarter. Wilkerson Advisory Group LLC now owns 443 shares of the company’s stock valued at $67,000 after buying an additional 404 shares in the last quarter. MWA Asset Management acquired a new stake in Snowflake during the first quarter valued at approximately $43,000. Finally, Harbor Advisors LLC raised its stake in Snowflake by 10.0% during the first quarter. Harbor Advisors LLC now owns 5,500 shares of the company’s stock valued at $830,000 after buying an additional 500 shares in the last quarter. 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.