Morgan Stanley Boosts Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Price Target to $150.00

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) had its price objective hoisted by equities research analysts at Morgan Stanley from $144.00 to $150.00 in a research note issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The firm currently has an “overweight” rating on the stock. Morgan Stanley’s price objective points to a potential upside of 13.28% from the stock’s current price.

Other research analysts also recently issued research reports about the stock. Bank of America raised shares of Cloudflare from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price objective for the stock from $60.00 to $160.00 in a research report on Tuesday, March 25th. Scotiabank upped their price target on Cloudflare from $87.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 21st. Baird R W cut Cloudflare from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, February 3rd. Guggenheim upped their target price on Cloudflare from $68.00 to $70.00 and gave the company a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday. Finally, UBS Group lowered their price target on Cloudflare from $165.00 to $135.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, March 13th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have given a hold rating, twelve have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $142.57.

Cloudflare Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:NET opened at $132.42 on Friday. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $116.02 and a 200 day moving average of $117.76. The company has a quick ratio of 3.37, a current ratio of 3.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32. The company has a market capitalization of $45.69 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -601.91 and a beta of 1.78. Cloudflare has a 52 week low of $66.24 and a 52 week high of $177.37.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 8th. The company reported $0.16 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by ($0.01). Cloudflare had a negative return on equity of 5.52% and a negative net margin of 4.72%. The company had revenue of $479.09 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $469.49 million. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $0.16 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 26.5% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Cloudflare will post -0.11 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Cloudflare

In related news, insider Michelle Zatlyn sold 35,099 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $164.84, for a total transaction of $5,785,719.16. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 25th. The shares were sold at an average price of $143.39, for a total value of $7,511,341.76. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 413,413 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $59,279,290.07. This represents a 11.25 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders sold 492,492 shares of company stock worth $63,757,685. Insiders own 12.83% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Cloudflare

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in NET. Headlands Technologies LLC acquired a new position in shares of Cloudflare in the first quarter worth about $57,000. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. raised its holdings in Cloudflare by 8.1% in the 1st quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,321,208 shares of the company’s stock worth $148,887,000 after purchasing an additional 99,448 shares during the period. ASR Vermogensbeheer N.V. acquired a new stake in Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at approximately $2,202,000. AXS Investments LLC acquired a new stake in Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at approximately $1,025,000. Finally, Vanguard Group Inc. increased its position in shares of Cloudflare by 1.8% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,836,909 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,475,011,000 after buying an additional 538,850 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.