Morgan Stanley Begins Coverage on Cloudflare (NYSE:NET)

Equities researchers at Morgan Stanley assumed coverage on shares of Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) in a report released on Tuesday. The brokerage set an “overweight” rating on the stock.

A number of other brokerages have also commented on NET. Baird R W lowered Cloudflare from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, February 3rd. Cantor Fitzgerald raised 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. Susquehanna raised their price objective on Cloudflare from $95.00 to $170.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday, February 10th. Truist Financial raised their price objective on Cloudflare from $120.00 to $140.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 28th. Finally, Oppenheimer downgraded Cloudflare from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Friday, February 7th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have given a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $130.04.

Cloudflare Trading Up 2.1 %

Shares of NET stock opened at $117.48 on Tuesday. Cloudflare has a fifty-two week low of $66.24 and a fifty-two week high of $177.37. The stock has a market capitalization of $40.54 billion, a P/E ratio of -534.02 and a beta of 1.27. 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 stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $136.54 and a 200 day simple moving average of $109.42.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, February 6th. The company reported ($0.03) EPS 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%. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Cloudflare will post -0.11 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In related news, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 15,000 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction on Friday, January 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $113.81, for a total transaction of $1,707,150.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 252,869 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $28,779,020.89. The trade was a 5.60 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction on Wednesday, March 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.32, for a total value of $6,145,690.88. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 413,413 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $48,501,613.16. This trade represents a 11.25 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 609,150 shares of company stock valued at $78,440,970. Company insiders own 12.83% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cloudflare

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Capital World Investors lifted its holdings in Cloudflare by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 35,409,307 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,812,942,000 after acquiring an additional 260,415 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in shares of Cloudflare by 1.4% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,903,219 shares of the company’s stock worth $526,986,000 after buying an additional 68,661 shares during the period. Groupama Asset Managment acquired a new position in shares of Cloudflare during the fourth quarter worth about $269,200,000. Norges Bank acquired a new position in shares of Cloudflare during the fourth quarter worth about $249,544,000. Finally, American Century Companies Inc. boosted its position in shares of Cloudflare by 82.0% during the fourth quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 2,257,601 shares of the company’s stock worth $243,098,000 after buying an additional 1,017,399 shares during the period. 82.68% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.