CICC Research Upgrades Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) to “Outperform”

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) was upgraded by analysts at CICC Research from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report released on Monday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a $154.00 price target on the stock. CICC Research’s price objective would indicate a potential upside of 8.16% from the stock’s previous close.

A number of other research analysts have also recently issued reports on NET. Jefferies Financial Group cut their price target on Cloudflare from $170.00 to $150.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a report on Friday. Guggenheim boosted their price objective on Cloudflare from $68.00 to $70.00 and gave the stock a “sell” rating in a report on Friday. Stifel Nicolaus raised their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $136.00 to $175.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 7th. DZ Bank cut shares of Cloudflare from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating and set a $145.00 target price for the company. in a research report on Tuesday, February 11th. Finally, Oppenheimer boosted their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $150.00 to $165.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating, thirteen have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Cloudflare has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $143.04.

Cloudflare Stock Performance

NET stock traded up $10.04 on Monday, reaching $142.38. 3,157,250 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 3,106,771. The firm has a market capitalization of $49.13 billion, a PE ratio of -647.12 and a beta of 1.78. Cloudflare has a 12 month low of $66.24 and a 12 month high of $177.37. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $116.02 and its 200 day moving average price is $117.96. 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 released its earnings results on Thursday, May 8th. The company reported $0.16 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.17 by ($0.01). Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 4.72% and a negative return on equity of 5.52%. The company had revenue of $479.09 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $469.49 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $0.16 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 26.5% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts anticipate that Cloudflare will post -0.11 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at Cloudflare

In other Cloudflare news, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 28,635 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $162.07, for a total transaction of $4,640,874.45. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 293,582 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $47,580,834.74. The trade was a 8.89% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CAO Janel Riley sold 4,327 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $167.60, for a total value of $725,205.20. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 74,698 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $12,519,384.80. The trade was a 5.48% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 492,492 shares of company stock valued at $63,757,685. 12.83% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of NET. CreativeOne Wealth LLC grew its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 0.8% during the fourth quarter. CreativeOne Wealth LLC now owns 6,982 shares of the company’s stock worth $752,000 after acquiring an additional 58 shares during the last quarter. Stratos Wealth Partners LTD. raised its position in shares of Cloudflare by 1.2% during the 4th quarter. Stratos Wealth Partners LTD. now owns 6,583 shares of the company’s stock valued at $709,000 after buying an additional 77 shares during the period. Gill Capital Partners LLC boosted its stake in Cloudflare by 2.9% during the first quarter. Gill Capital Partners LLC now owns 2,761 shares of the company’s stock worth $311,000 after buying an additional 79 shares during the period. Atomi Financial Group Inc. boosted its position in shares of Cloudflare by 3.3% during the 4th quarter. Atomi Financial Group Inc. now owns 2,966 shares of the company’s stock worth $319,000 after acquiring an additional 94 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Spire Wealth Management raised its position in shares of Cloudflare by 11.0% during the 1st quarter. Spire Wealth Management now owns 962 shares of the company’s stock worth $108,000 after acquiring an additional 95 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

About Cloudflare

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.