Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Hits New 52-Week High – Still a Buy?

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW)’s share price reached a new 52-week high on Wednesday . The company traded as high as $289.81 and last traded at $283.9840, with a volume of 1243081 shares traded. The stock had previously closed at $270.36.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several research analysts have issued reports on the company. Monness Crespi & Hardt boosted their target price on Snowflake from $282.00 to $320.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Cantor Fitzgerald increased their price target on Snowflake from $225.00 to $282.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Royal Bank Of Canada raised their price target on Snowflake from $284.00 to $313.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, July 17th. Needham & Company LLC boosted their price objective on Snowflake from $300.00 to $330.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 3rd. Finally, KeyCorp upped their price objective on Snowflake from $285.00 to $325.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. Thirty-four research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Snowflake presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $296.27.

Snowflake Price Performance

The firm has a market capitalization of $98.24 billion, a P/E ratio of -80.78 and a beta of 1.35. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $243.29 and its 200 day simple moving average is $195.70. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a current ratio of 1.05.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The company reported $0.39 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.32 by $0.07. The firm had revenue of $1.39 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.32 billion. Snowflake had a negative net margin of 23.79% and a negative return on equity of 50.50%. The company’s revenue was up 33.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $0.24 earnings per share. As a group, analysts expect that Snowflake Inc. will post -1.84 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Snowflake news, Director Michael L. Speiser sold 50,338 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, May 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $141.60, for a total transaction of $7,127,860.80. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 28,556 shares in the company, valued at $4,043,529.60. This trade represents a 63.80% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Frank Slootman sold 437,076 shares of Snowflake stock in a transaction on Friday, May 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $252.43, for a total value of $110,331,094.68. Following the sale, the director directly owned 38,046 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $9,603,951.78. This trade represents a 91.99% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 2,102,015 shares of company stock worth $504,063,952 in the last ninety days. 4.80% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Snowflake

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Snowflake in the fourth quarter worth about $974,091,000. Jennison Associates LLC increased its position in Snowflake by 27.7% during the 4th quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 11,603,302 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,545,300,000 after purchasing an additional 2,519,413 shares during the period. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. purchased a new position in Snowflake during the 4th quarter valued at about $345,619,000. Vanguard Group Inc. raised 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 purchasing an additional 1,448,094 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA raised its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 445.6% in the 4th quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA now owns 1,490,569 shares of the company’s stock valued at $326,971,000 after purchasing an additional 1,217,350 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors 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.