Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Coverage Initiated by Analysts at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley initiated coverage on shares of Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) in a report released on Tuesday morning. The firm issued an overweight rating on the stock.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently commented on the company. Piper Sandler lowered their target price on Cloudflare from $153.00 to $131.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, March 13th. Cantor Fitzgerald lifted their price objective on Cloudflare from $111.00 to $149.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, February 7th. Guggenheim upped their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $57.00 to $68.00 and gave the company a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, February 7th. Scotiabank lifted their price target on shares of Cloudflare from $87.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 21st. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group raised their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $100.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have issued a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Cloudflare has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $130.04.

Cloudflare Stock Performance

NET opened at $114.99 on Tuesday. Cloudflare has a 1-year low of $66.24 and a 1-year high of $177.37. The stock has a market cap of $39.68 billion, a P/E ratio of -522.70 and a beta of 1.27. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $136.54 and its 200 day simple moving average is $109.42. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a current ratio of 3.37 and a quick ratio of 3.37.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, February 6th. The company reported ($0.03) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.18 by ($0.21). Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 4.72% and a negative return on equity of 5.52%. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Cloudflare will post -0.11 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Cloudflare news, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, December 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $111.90, for a total value of $5,861,769.60. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 10,762 shares in the company, valued at $1,204,267.80. This trade represents a 82.96 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, insider Douglas James Kramer sold 2,481 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $131.66, for a total transaction of $326,648.46. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now directly owns 175,688 shares in the company, valued at approximately $23,131,082.08. This trade represents a 1.39 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 504,382 shares of company stock worth $66,194,115. Corporate insiders own 12.83% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cloudflare

Hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Hartline Investment Corp raised its holdings in shares of Cloudflare by 1.5% during the 4th quarter. Hartline Investment Corp now owns 264,336 shares of the company’s stock valued at $28,464,000 after purchasing an additional 3,957 shares in the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. increased its position in Cloudflare by 2.7% during the third quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,157,815 shares of the company’s stock worth $93,656,000 after buying an additional 29,960 shares during the last quarter. Birchcreek Wealth Management LLC bought a new position in Cloudflare during the fourth quarter valued at about $215,000. Strategic Blueprint LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the fourth quarter worth about $265,000. Finally, Banque Cantonale Vaudoise boosted its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 20.8% during the 3rd quarter. Banque Cantonale Vaudoise now owns 36,753 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,973,000 after acquiring an additional 6,326 shares in the last quarter. 82.68% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.