Citigroup Issues Pessimistic Forecast for Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) Stock Price

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) had its price objective cut by stock analysts at Citigroup from $115.00 to $95.00 in a research note issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has a “buy” rating on the stock. Citigroup’s target price suggests a potential upside of 63.79% from the company’s previous close.

Several other research analysts have also recently issued reports on the company. Royal Bank Of Canada dropped their price target on Elastic from $115.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, January 5th. Canaccord Genuity Group cut their target price on Elastic from $120.00 to $115.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, November 21st. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their target price on Elastic from $134.00 to $108.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Friday, November 21st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their price target on Elastic from $113.00 to $98.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Friday. Finally, DA Davidson cut their price objective on Elastic from $100.00 to $80.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, November 21st. Seventeen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, eleven have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Elastic presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $102.17.

Elastic Stock Performance

Shares of Elastic stock traded down $4.06 on Friday, reaching $58.00. 2,586,911 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,750,670. The firm has a market cap of $6.11 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -56.31, a P/E/G ratio of 248.26 and a beta of 0.93. Elastic has a 1-year low of $56.69 and a 1-year high of $117.49. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.64, a quick ratio of 1.97 and a current ratio of 1.97. The company’s 50-day moving average is $70.68 and its two-hundred day moving average is $78.69.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 20th. The company reported $0.64 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.58 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $423.48 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $418.27 million. Elastic had a negative net margin of 6.79% and a negative return on equity of 2.02%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 15.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $0.59 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts expect that Elastic will post -0.77 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at Elastic

In related news, insider Carolyn Herzog sold 5,353 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, December 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $75.05, for a total transaction of $401,742.65. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 89,324 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,703,766.20. This trade represents a 5.65% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director Paul R. Auvil III acquired 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 1st. The shares were bought at an average cost of $71.02 per share, for a total transaction of $710,200.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 37,956 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,695,635.12. This represents a 35.77% increase in their position. Additional details regarding this purchase are available in the official SEC disclosure. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 61,828 shares of company stock worth $4,641,010. Company insiders own 12.70% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Elastic

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. AQR Capital Management LLC grew its position in Elastic by 153.4% in the fourth quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 7,545,081 shares of the company’s stock worth $569,201,000 after acquiring an additional 4,567,720 shares in the last quarter. FIL Ltd lifted its stake in shares of Elastic by 36.9% in the 4th quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 3,628,748 shares of the company’s stock valued at $273,753,000 after purchasing an additional 977,578 shares during the last quarter. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. lifted its stake in shares of Elastic by 490.4% in the 3rd quarter. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. now owns 1,113,503 shares of the company’s stock valued at $94,080,000 after purchasing an additional 924,911 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its holdings in Elastic by 7.4% in the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 10,206,204 shares of the company’s stock worth $862,322,000 after purchasing an additional 705,991 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Qube Research & Technologies Ltd increased its position in Elastic by 302.1% during the second quarter. Qube Research & Technologies Ltd now owns 932,630 shares of the company’s stock worth $78,649,000 after buying an additional 700,697 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 97.03% of the company’s stock.

About Elastic

Elastic N.V. operates as a search and analytics company, offering a suite of open source and subscription-based solutions for search, observability and security use cases. Its flagship product, Elasticsearch, enables fast and scalable full-text search and analytics across large volumes of structured and unstructured data. Complementary tools such as Kibana provide visualization capabilities, while Beats and Logstash serve as lightweight data shippers and data processing pipelines, respectively.

The company was founded in 2012 by Shay Banon, who serves as chief technology officer, and Steven Schuurman.