Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Raised to “Buy” at Stifel Nicolaus

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) was upgraded by Stifel Nicolaus from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report released on Tuesday, MarketBeat.com reports. The brokerage currently has a $136.00 target price on the stock, up from their prior target price of $95.00. Stifel Nicolaus’ price target would indicate a potential upside of 24.66% from the company’s previous close.

Other equities research analysts also recently issued research reports about the company. Morgan Stanley raised Cloudflare from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $92.00 to $130.00 in a research report on Monday, December 2nd. Scotiabank increased their target price on Cloudflare from $85.00 to $87.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a report on Friday, November 8th. BNP Paribas initiated coverage on Cloudflare in a research report on Tuesday, October 8th. They issued an “underperform” rating and a $65.00 price target on the stock. UBS Group upped their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $88.00 to $95.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, November 8th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company raised their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $105.00 to $110.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Friday, November 8th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have given a hold rating and twelve have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $96.77.

Cloudflare Stock Down 7.2 %

NET opened at $109.10 on Tuesday. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $97.50 and a 200-day moving average of $85.78. The company has a market capitalization of $37.44 billion, a P/E ratio of -419.62 and a beta of 1.10. Cloudflare has a fifty-two week low of $66.24 and a fifty-two week high of $119.42. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a quick ratio of 3.37 and a current ratio of 3.37.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 7th. The company reported ($0.03) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.03). Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 5.97% and a negative return on equity of 7.18%. The firm had revenue of $430.08 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $423.65 million. On average, equities analysts expect that Cloudflare will post -0.1 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other Cloudflare news, Director Maria S. Eitel sold 6,875 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $88.00, for a total value of $605,000.00. Following the sale, the director now owns 5,927 shares in the company, valued at approximately $521,576. The trade was a 53.70 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, insider Douglas James Kramer sold 3,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $88.60, for a total value of $265,800.00. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 185,386 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $16,425,199.60. This trade represents a 1.59 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 509,824 shares of company stock valued at $47,862,488 over the last quarter. 12.83% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Trading of Cloudflare

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Baillie Gifford & Co. lifted its position in shares of Cloudflare by 8.5% in the 2nd quarter. Baillie Gifford & Co. now owns 32,722,670 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,710,419,000 after purchasing an additional 2,575,396 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in Cloudflare by 2.6% in the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,834,558 shares of the company’s stock valued at $390,130,000 after buying an additional 121,810 shares during the period. Marshall Wace LLP boosted its position in Cloudflare by 123.4% during the second quarter. Marshall Wace LLP now owns 1,548,535 shares of the company’s stock valued at $128,265,000 after acquiring an additional 855,334 shares during the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. grew its holdings in Cloudflare by 24.8% during the 2nd quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 1,394,732 shares of the company’s stock worth $115,526,000 after acquiring an additional 277,228 shares during the period. Finally, Bank of New York Mellon Corp raised its position in shares of Cloudflare by 3.0% in the 2nd quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 1,251,670 shares of the company’s stock worth $103,676,000 after acquiring an additional 35,884 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

About Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc operates as a cloud services provider that delivers a range of services to businesses worldwide. The company provides an integrated cloud-based security solution to secure a range of combination of platforms, including public cloud, private cloud, on-premise, software-as-a-service applications, and IoT devices; and website and application security products comprising web application firewall, bot management, distributed denial of service, API gateways, SSL/TLS encryption, script management, security center, and rate limiting products.