Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Stock Price Up 3.8% – Still a Buy?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) rose 3.8% during mid-day trading on Tuesday . The stock traded as high as $186.58 and last traded at $182.58. Approximately 9,379,415 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 57% from the average daily volume of 5,987,414 shares. The stock had previously closed at $175.95.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several research analysts recently issued reports on SNOW shares. Canaccord Genuity Group lifted their price objective on Snowflake from $260.00 to $270.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Morgan Stanley restated an “overweight” rating and set a $299.00 price objective on shares of Snowflake in a report on Tuesday, January 27th. Zacks Research downgraded Snowflake from a “hold” rating to a “strong sell” rating in a research report on Tuesday, February 3rd. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “sell (d-)” rating on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Wednesday, January 21st. Finally, Oppenheimer restated an “outperform” rating on shares of Snowflake in a report on Friday, November 21st. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have issued a Buy rating, four have assigned a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $275.58.

Snowflake Stock Performance

The firm has a market capitalization of $62.48 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -45.19 and a beta of 1.14. 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 stock’s fifty day moving average is $214.05 and its two-hundred day moving average is $226.33.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, December 3rd. The company reported $0.35 earnings per share 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 company had revenue of $1.21 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.18 billion. During the same period last year, the firm earned $0.20 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 28.7% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts forecast that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.36 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Transactions at Snowflake

In other Snowflake news, Director Frank Slootman sold 200,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, January 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $206.77, for a total transaction of $41,354,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 50,329 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,406,527.33. This trade represents a 79.89% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CAO Emily Ho sold 1,072 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $223.63, for a total transaction of $239,731.36. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer directly owned 43,809 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $9,797,006.67. The trade was a 2.39% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders sold a total of 613,681 shares of company stock valued at $130,573,518 over the last ninety days. 6.80% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Snowflake

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 5.1% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,095,687 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,601,790,000 after buying an additional 1,448,094 shares during the period. Jennison Associates LLC lifted its holdings in Snowflake by 27.7% in the fourth quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 11,603,302 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,545,300,000 after acquiring an additional 2,519,413 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 1.4% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 6,887,073 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,541,120,000 after purchasing an additional 94,293 shares during the last quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership raised its position in shares of Snowflake by 15.2% during the 2nd quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership now owns 4,951,715 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,108,045,000 after purchasing an additional 652,485 shares during the period. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in Snowflake by 5.5% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,809,689 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,052,195,000 after buying an additional 249,668 shares during the last quarter. 65.10% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.