Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Trading Up 1.2% – Should You Buy?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) shares shot up 1.2% during mid-day trading on Monday . The stock traded as high as $183.11 and last traded at $182.6280. 4,786,117 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 27% from the average session volume of 6,542,755 shares. The stock had previously closed at $180.48.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts recently commented on the stock. Argus raised shares of Snowflake from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 price target for the company in a research report on Thursday, January 8th. Robert W. Baird lifted their price target on shares of Snowflake from $260.00 to $270.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Barclays dropped their price objective on Snowflake from $204.00 to $192.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, February 26th. Scotiabank cut their target price on Snowflake from $290.00 to $205.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC lowered their price target on Snowflake from $280.00 to $200.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 26th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-three have given a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and two have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Snowflake has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $248.58.

Snowflake Stock Performance

The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $193.81 and a 200 day simple moving average of $222.14. 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 company has a market cap of $62.50 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -46.23 and a beta of 1.16.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, February 25th. The company reported $0.32 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.27 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $1.28 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.25 billion. Snowflake had a negative return on equity of 48.50% and a negative net margin of 28.43%.The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 30.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $0.30 earnings per share. As a group, analysts predict that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.36 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, March 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $165.01, for a total value of $1,650,100.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 510,477 shares in the company, valued at approximately $84,233,809.77. This represents a 1.92% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, Director Frank Slootman sold 100,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, February 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $176.91, for a total transaction of $17,691,000.00. Following the sale, the director directly owned 50,329 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,903,703.39. The trade was a 66.52% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders sold 662,940 shares of company stock worth $135,715,906 over the last three months. Insiders own 6.80% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Snowflake

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in SNOW. Grey Fox Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Snowflake during the third quarter worth about $25,000. Tripletail Wealth Management LLC purchased a new position in Snowflake in the third quarter valued at about $28,000. Kemnay Advisory Services Inc. acquired a new stake in Snowflake during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $28,000. Greenline Wealth Management LLC acquired a new stake in Snowflake during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $29,000. Finally, SJS Investment Consulting Inc. increased its holdings in Snowflake by 4,333.3% during the 3rd quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 133 shares of the company’s stock worth $30,000 after purchasing an additional 130 shares during the last quarter. 65.10% of the stock is 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.