Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Shares Gap Up – What’s Next?

Shares of Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) gapped up prior to trading on Thursday . The stock had previously closed at $107.68, but opened at $114.50. Cloudflare shares last traded at $114.48, with a volume of 1,008,140 shares changing hands.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research analysts recently weighed in on NET shares. UBS Group boosted their price target on shares of Cloudflare from $88.00 to $95.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, November 8th. BNP Paribas started coverage on Cloudflare in a report on Tuesday, October 8th. They issued an “underperform” rating and a $65.00 target price for the company. Piper Sandler lifted their price target on Cloudflare from $83.00 to $92.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, November 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Cloudflare from a “sell” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $77.00 to $140.00 in a research report on Thursday. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus raised Cloudflare from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the company from $95.00 to $136.00 in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have issued a hold rating and thirteen have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Cloudflare has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $100.48.

Cloudflare Trading Up 5.5 %

The firm has a market capitalization of $38.98 billion, a PE ratio of -436.85 and a beta of 1.10. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $101.84 and its 200-day simple moving average is $88.66. The company has a quick ratio of 3.37, a current ratio of 3.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32.

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

Insider Activity at Cloudflare

In other Cloudflare news, COO Michelle Zatlyn sold 25,640 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, December 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $113.16, for a total transaction of $2,901,422.40. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer now directly owns 172,959 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $19,572,040.44. The trade was a 12.91 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 15,000 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction dated Friday, October 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $90.88, for a total transaction of $1,363,200.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 281,403 shares in the company, valued at $25,573,904.64. The trade was a 5.06 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 614,592 shares of company stock worth $60,146,600 in the last three months. 12.83% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Cloudflare

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Marshall Wace LLP raised its position in shares of Cloudflare by 123.4% in the 2nd quarter. Marshall Wace LLP now owns 1,548,535 shares of the company’s stock worth $128,265,000 after acquiring an additional 855,334 shares in the last quarter. WIM INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Ltd bought a new position in Cloudflare in the third quarter worth $25,588,000. American Century Companies Inc. lifted its position in Cloudflare by 24.8% during the second quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 1,394,732 shares of the company’s stock valued at $115,526,000 after buying an additional 277,228 shares during the period. Glynn Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Cloudflare during the 2nd quarter valued at $16,765,000. Finally, International Assets Investment Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the 3rd quarter worth about $147,160,000. 82.68% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.