Driehaus Capital Management LLC Purchases Shares of 56,774 Elastic (NYSE:ESTC)

Driehaus Capital Management LLC acquired a new position in Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund acquired 56,774 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,625,000.

Other large investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in Elastic by 1.8% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 9,352,108 shares of the company’s stock worth $926,607,000 after purchasing an additional 168,483 shares during the last quarter. Pictet Asset Management Holding SA grew its position in Elastic by 15.6% during the fourth quarter. Pictet Asset Management Holding SA now owns 3,429,756 shares of the company’s stock worth $339,820,000 after buying an additional 462,974 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Elastic by 3.2% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,439,412 shares of the company’s stock valued at $142,663,000 after acquiring an additional 45,076 shares during the period. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Elastic in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $102,485,000. Finally, Federated Hermes Inc. lifted its position in shares of Elastic by 15.4% in the 4th quarter. Federated Hermes Inc. now owns 884,400 shares of the company’s stock worth $87,626,000 after acquiring an additional 118,294 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 97.03% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity

In other news, CRO Mark Eugene Dodds sold 2,755 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, March 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $90.77, for a total value of $250,071.35. Following the transaction, the executive now directly owns 96,484 shares in the company, valued at $8,757,852.68. This trade represents a 2.78 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Ashutosh Kulkarni sold 18,735 shares of Elastic stock in a transaction on Monday, March 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $90.77, for a total value of $1,700,575.95. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 376,591 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $34,183,165.07. This trade represents a 4.74 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 198,304 shares of company stock valued at $20,847,452. 15.90% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have recently issued reports on ESTC shares. Morgan Stanley lowered their price objective on Elastic from $140.00 to $120.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, April 16th. Piper Sandler increased their price objective on shares of Elastic from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, February 28th. Scotiabank decreased their target price on shares of Elastic from $140.00 to $137.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, March 27th. Canaccord Genuity Group upped their target price on shares of Elastic from $130.00 to $135.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 28th. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group cut their price target on shares of Elastic from $125.00 to $110.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, April 7th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, eighteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Elastic presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $127.48.

Elastic Stock Performance

ESTC stock opened at $85.55 on Friday. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $87.13 and a 200 day moving average price of $96.66. Elastic has a fifty-two week low of $69.00 and a fifty-two week high of $123.96. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.70, a current ratio of 1.99 and a quick ratio of 1.99. The stock has a market capitalization of $8.93 billion, a PE ratio of 155.55 and a beta of 1.20.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 27th. The company reported ($0.01) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.47 by ($0.48). The firm had revenue of $382.08 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $368.85 million. Elastic had a negative return on equity of 13.20% and a net margin of 4.39%. Analysts forecast that Elastic will post -0.77 EPS for the current year.

Elastic Company Profile

Elastic N.V., a data analytics company, delivers solutions designed to run in public or private clouds in multi-cloud environments. It primarily offers Elastic Stack, a set of software products that ingest and store data from various sources and formats, as well as performs search, analysis, and visualization on that data.