Needham & Company LLC Reaffirms “Hold” Rating for Elastic (NYSE:ESTC)

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC)‘s stock had its “hold” rating restated by analysts at Needham & Company LLC in a report released on Friday,Benzinga reports.

A number of other analysts have also recently weighed in on ESTC. Oppenheimer decreased their price target on shares of Elastic from $150.00 to $125.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, August 30th. Jefferies Financial Group dropped their price target on Elastic from $140.00 to $110.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, August 30th. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price objective on Elastic from $145.00 to $100.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, August 30th. Bank of America boosted their target price on Elastic from $94.00 to $120.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday. Finally, Wedbush raised Elastic to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, October 17th. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, seventeen have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Elastic has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $122.00.

Elastic Trading Up 14.8 %

NYSE ESTC opened at $108.03 on Friday. Elastic has a 12 month low of $69.00 and a 12 month high of $136.06. The company has a market capitalization of $11.10 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 196.42 and a beta of 0.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.75, a current ratio of 1.91 and a quick ratio of 1.91. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $81.78 and its 200 day moving average price is $97.04.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, August 29th. The company reported $0.35 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.25 by $0.10. The business had revenue of $347.42 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $344.67 million. Elastic had a negative return on equity of 13.54% and a net margin of 4.39%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 18.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned ($0.35) EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Elastic will post -0.92 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other Elastic news, CEO Ashutosh Kulkarni sold 19,649 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, September 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $70.25, for a total transaction of $1,380,342.25. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 432,648 shares in the company, valued at approximately $30,393,522. This represents a 4.34 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, Director Paul R. Auvil III purchased 20,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 3rd. The shares were bought at an average cost of $74.25 per share, with a total value of $1,485,000.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 22,627 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,680,054.75. This represents a 761.32 % increase in their position. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 37,406 shares of company stock worth $2,627,772 over the last 90 days. 15.90% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Elastic

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in ESTC. Advisors Asset Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Elastic by 12.7% during the 1st quarter. Advisors Asset Management Inc. now owns 1,053 shares of the company’s stock worth $106,000 after purchasing an additional 119 shares during the period. Signaturefd LLC lifted its position in Elastic by 44.1% during the second quarter. Signaturefd LLC now owns 389 shares of the company’s stock worth $44,000 after buying an additional 119 shares during the period. M&T Bank Corp boosted its stake in Elastic by 3.1% in the 3rd quarter. M&T Bank Corp now owns 4,652 shares of the company’s stock worth $357,000 after buying an additional 139 shares during the last quarter. QRG Capital Management Inc. grew its holdings in Elastic by 7.0% in the 3rd quarter. QRG Capital Management Inc. now owns 3,063 shares of the company’s stock valued at $235,000 after buying an additional 201 shares during the period. Finally, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. increased its stake in shares of Elastic by 3.3% during the 3rd quarter. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. now owns 6,810 shares of the company’s stock valued at $523,000 after acquiring an additional 219 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 97.03% of the company’s stock.

About Elastic

Elastic N.V., a data analytics company, delivers solutions designed to run in public or private clouds in multi-cloud environments. It primarily offers Elastic Stack, a set of software products that ingest and store data from various sources and formats, as well as performs search, analysis, and visualization on that data.