Morgan Stanley Reiterates “Overweight” Rating for Cloudflare (NYSE:NET)

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET)‘s stock had its “overweight” rating reiterated by equities research analysts at Morgan Stanley in a note issued to investors on Friday, MarketBeat.com reports. They presently have a $225.00 price objective on the stock, up from their previous price objective of $150.00. Morgan Stanley’s price objective would indicate a potential upside of 24.19% from the stock’s current price.

Several other equities research analysts also recently commented on NET. Capital One Financial upgraded shares of Cloudflare from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 8th. Bank of America upgraded shares of Cloudflare from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their target price for the stock from $60.00 to $160.00 in a research report on Tuesday, March 25th. CICC Research upgraded shares of Cloudflare from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $154.00 target price for the company in a research report on Monday, May 12th. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $135.00 to $145.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, May 9th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada cut their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $170.00 to $148.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, March 13th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have issued a hold rating, fifteen have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $148.92.

Cloudflare Stock Down 0.4%

Shares of NYSE:NET opened at $181.18 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.90, a quick ratio of 3.20 and a current ratio of 3.20. The company has a market cap of $62.80 billion, a PE ratio of -787.74 and a beta of 1.85. Cloudflare has a 52 week low of $69.26 and a 52 week high of $198.01. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $169.44 and a 200 day simple moving average of $140.88.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, May 8th. The company reported $0.16 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.17 by ($0.01). The firm had revenue of $479.09 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $469.49 million. Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 4.62% and a negative return on equity of 6.31%. The firm’s revenue was up 26.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.16 EPS. As a group, research analysts expect that Cloudflare will post -0.11 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity at Cloudflare

In related news, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, May 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $152.68, for a total value of $7,997,989.12. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 10,426 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,591,841.68. This trade represents a 83.40% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, insider Michelle Zatlyn sold 35,098 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $156.83, for a total transaction of $5,504,419.34. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider owned 6,390 shares in the company, valued at $1,002,143.70. The trade was a 84.60% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 581,060 shares of company stock worth $95,040,197. 10.89% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Capital World Investors grew its position in Cloudflare by 0.7% in the 4th quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 35,409,307 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,812,942,000 after purchasing an additional 260,415 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in Cloudflare by 1.8% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,836,909 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,475,011,000 after purchasing an additional 538,850 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its position in Cloudflare by 1.4% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,903,219 shares of the company’s stock worth $526,986,000 after purchasing an additional 68,661 shares during the last quarter. UBS AM A Distinct Business Unit of UBS Asset Management Americas LLC grew its position in Cloudflare by 33.5% in the 1st quarter. UBS AM A Distinct Business Unit of UBS Asset Management Americas LLC now owns 3,129,030 shares of the company’s stock worth $352,610,000 after purchasing an additional 786,063 shares during the last quarter. Finally, American Century Companies Inc. grew its position in Cloudflare by 34.5% in the 1st quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 3,037,420 shares of the company’s stock worth $342,287,000 after purchasing an additional 779,819 shares during the last quarter. 82.68% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.