Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Upgraded to Buy at The Goldman Sachs Group

The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) from a sell rating to a buy rating in a research report report published on Thursday morning, Marketbeat.com reports. The Goldman Sachs Group currently has $140.00 target price on the stock, up from their previous target price of $77.00.

Several other brokerages also recently commented on NET. Jefferies Financial Group raised their target price on Cloudflare from $100.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, December 19th. Piper Sandler raised their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $83.00 to $92.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, November 8th. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Cloudflare from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and upped their target price for the stock from $92.00 to $130.00 in a report on Monday, December 2nd. BNP Paribas assumed coverage on shares of Cloudflare in a report on Tuesday, October 8th. They issued an “underperform” rating and a $65.00 price target for the company. Finally, Mizuho upped their price target on shares of Cloudflare from $102.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, December 13th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have issued a hold rating and thirteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Cloudflare has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $100.48.

Cloudflare Stock Performance

Shares of NET stock opened at $112.54 on Thursday. The firm’s 50 day moving average is $102.30 and its 200 day moving average is $88.83. The stock has a market capitalization of $38.62 billion, a P/E ratio of -432.85 and a beta of 1.10. Cloudflare has a 12 month low of $66.24 and a 12 month high of $119.42. The company has a current ratio of 3.37, a quick ratio of 3.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, November 7th. The company reported ($0.03) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, hitting 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 firm had revenue of $430.08 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $423.65 million. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Cloudflare will post -0.1 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity

In related news, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 15,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on 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 completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 281,403 shares in the company, valued at $25,573,904.64. This represents a 5.06 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $93.95, for a total transaction of $4,921,476.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 10,761 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,010,995.95. This trade represents a 82.96 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 614,592 shares of company stock valued at $60,146,600. 12.83% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Cloudflare

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. CVA Family Office LLC increased its holdings in Cloudflare by 121.3% during the 3rd quarter. CVA Family Office LLC now owns 312 shares of the company’s stock valued at $25,000 after purchasing an additional 171 shares during the period. Quarry LP increased its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 73.4% during the second quarter. Quarry LP now owns 345 shares of the company’s stock valued at $29,000 after buying an additional 146 shares during the period. Capital Performance Advisors LLP purchased a new position in shares of Cloudflare during the third quarter valued at approximately $38,000. Quest Partners LLC bought a new position in shares of Cloudflare during the third quarter valued at approximately $54,000. Finally, Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC lifted its stake in Cloudflare by 212.2% in the second quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 868 shares of the company’s stock worth $72,000 after acquiring an additional 590 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

Cloudflare Company Profile

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.