Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Cut to “Strong Sell” at Zacks Research

Zacks Research lowered shares of Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) from a hold rating to a strong sell rating in a report issued on Tuesday morning,Zacks.com reports.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently issued reports on the stock. Jefferies Financial Group set a $300.00 target price on shares of Snowflake in a report on Monday, November 24th. Wedbush reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $270.00 price target on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and set a $280.00 price objective on shares of Snowflake in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lifted their target price on Snowflake from $250.00 to $275.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Finally, Barclays reissued an “equal weight” rating and issued a $250.00 price target (down from $290.00) on shares of Snowflake in a report on Monday, January 12th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating, four have issued a Hold rating and four have issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $275.58.

Snowflake Trading Down 5.3%

Shares of SNOW opened at $156.55 on Tuesday. Snowflake has a fifty-two week low of $120.10 and a fifty-two week high of $280.67. The business has a 50-day moving average of $217.23 and a 200 day moving average of $226.74. The firm has a market cap of $53.57 billion, a P/E ratio of -38.75 and a beta of 1.14. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.07, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a current ratio of 1.37.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, December 3rd. The company reported $0.35 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.31 by $0.04. Snowflake had a negative net margin of 30.76% and a negative return on equity of 45.91%. The firm had revenue of $1.21 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.18 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $0.20 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 28.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts forecast that Snowflake will post -2.36 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Snowflake

In related news, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $197.09, for a total value of $1,970,900.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 461,351 shares in the company, valued at $90,927,668.59. The trade was a 2.12% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director Michael L. Speiser sold 403 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, January 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $221.16, for a total transaction of $89,127.48. Following the transaction, the director owned 24,121 shares in the company, valued at $5,334,600.36. The trade was a 1.64% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 562,940 shares of company stock valued at $122,190,090. 6.80% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Snowflake

A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in SNOW. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Snowflake by 1.1% in the third quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. now owns 732,092 shares of the company’s stock worth $165,123,000 after acquiring an additional 8,002 shares during the period. OVERSEA CHINESE BANKING Corp Ltd bought a new position in Snowflake during the second quarter valued at approximately $6,845,000. Federated Hermes Inc. boosted its holdings in Snowflake by 13.5% in the third quarter. Federated Hermes Inc. now owns 408,037 shares of the company’s stock worth $92,047,000 after purchasing an additional 48,411 shares during the last quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC grew its position in Snowflake by 32.8% in the 3rd quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 153,358 shares of the company’s stock worth $34,586,000 after purchasing an additional 37,911 shares during the period. Finally, Rheos Capital Works Inc. grew its position in Snowflake by 102.9% in the 3rd quarter. Rheos Capital Works Inc. now owns 207,000 shares of the company’s stock worth $46,689,000 after purchasing an additional 105,000 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 65.10% of the company’s stock.

Key Stories Impacting Snowflake

Here are the key news stories impacting Snowflake this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Snowflake announced a multi‑year, roughly $200M enterprise AI partnership with OpenAI — a deal that can drive incremental consumption revenue if customers run LLMs and tooling on Snowflake’s data platform. Snowflake and OpenAI Unveil $200M AI Partnership
• Positive Sentiment: Customer win: United Rentals rolled out an AI Business Intelligence agent built on Snowflake Intelligence — proof of enterprise adoption that could increase query/compute usage. United Rentals Empowers Frontline Decision‑Making with Business Intelligence Agent Built on Snowflake
• Neutral Sentiment: Coverage and features note that Snowflake’s AI product roadmap (Cortex, semantic tools, Postgres integrations) expands use cases, but markets want evidence that consumption—and margins—will scale profitably. Fool: Here’s 1 AI Stock Down About 25% Already in 2026. Is It a Buy?
• Neutral Sentiment: FastCompany ran a critical piece arguing Snowflake believes current AI coding agents target the wrong problem — useful context on strategy and product positioning but not an immediate revenue trigger. Snowflake thinks AI coding agents are solving the wrong problem
• Negative Sentiment: Analyst downgrade: Zacks Research moved SNOW from “hold” to “strong sell,” adding downward analyst pressure and signaling weaker near‑term sentiment among some sell‑side participants. Zacks Research
• Negative Sentiment: Legal risk: Johnson Fistel announced an investigation into whether Snowflake or its officers complied with securities laws, increasing uncertainty and potential litigation risk. Johnson Fistel Investigation Notice
• Negative Sentiment: Insider selling: EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares (recent filings) — not unusual in isolation but contributes to short‑term selling pressure and investor concern. SEC Form 4 — Kleinerman Sale

Snowflake Company Profile

Snowflake Inc is a cloud-native data platform company that provides a suite of services for storing, processing and analyzing large volumes of data. Its core offering, often described as the Snowflake Data Cloud, combines data warehousing, data lake and data sharing capabilities in a single managed service delivered across major public cloud providers. The platform is designed to support analytics, data engineering, data science and application workloads with a focus on scalability, concurrency and simplified administration.

Key products and capabilities include a multi-cluster, shared-data architecture that separates compute from storage; continuous data ingestion and streaming; support for structured and semi-structured data formats; tools for data governance, security and compliance; and developer frameworks for building data applications.