Citigroup Issues Pessimistic Forecast for Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) Stock Price

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) had its target price dropped by equities research analysts at Citigroup from $115.00 to $95.00 in a research note issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The firm presently has a “buy” rating on the stock. Citigroup’s price objective indicates a potential upside of 63.79% from the company’s current price.

A number of other analysts have also recently weighed in on ESTC. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their target price on shares of Elastic from $90.00 to $75.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a report on Friday, November 21st. Rosenblatt Securities cut their price objective on Elastic from $130.00 to $110.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, January 30th. Cantor Fitzgerald reduced their price objective on Elastic from $94.00 to $85.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, November 21st. Weiss Ratings restated a “sell (d)” rating on shares of Elastic in a report on Wednesday, January 21st. Finally, Piper Sandler reduced their target price on Elastic from $125.00 to $110.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Friday, November 21st. Seventeen investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, eleven have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $102.17.

Elastic Price Performance

NYSE:ESTC opened at $58.00 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.97, a current ratio of 1.97 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.64. The business’s 50-day moving average price is $70.32 and its 200 day moving average price is $78.52. Elastic has a 52-week low of $56.69 and a 52-week high of $117.49. The firm has a market cap of $6.11 billion, a P/E ratio of -56.31, a PEG ratio of 236.42 and a beta of 0.93.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 20th. The company reported $0.64 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.58 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $423.48 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $418.27 million. Elastic had a negative net margin of 6.79% and a negative return on equity of 2.02%. Elastic’s revenue was up 15.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $0.59 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Elastic will post -0.77 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at Elastic

In other Elastic news, Director Paul R. Auvil III bought 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 1st. The shares were bought at an average price of $71.02 per share, for a total transaction of $710,200.00. Following the acquisition, the director directly owned 37,956 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,695,635.12. This trade represents a 35.77% increase in their ownership of the stock. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Carolyn Herzog sold 5,353 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, December 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $75.05, for a total transaction of $401,742.65. Following the sale, the insider owned 89,324 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $6,703,766.20. This represents a 5.65% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 61,828 shares of company stock worth $4,641,010. Company insiders own 12.70% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Elastic

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in ESTC. AQR Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Elastic by 153.4% in the fourth quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 7,545,081 shares of the company’s stock worth $569,201,000 after buying an additional 4,567,720 shares during the last quarter. FIL Ltd raised its holdings in Elastic by 36.9% in the 4th quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 3,628,748 shares of the company’s stock worth $273,753,000 after acquiring an additional 977,578 shares during the period. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. lifted its position in Elastic by 490.4% during the 3rd quarter. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. now owns 1,113,503 shares of the company’s stock worth $94,080,000 after acquiring an additional 924,911 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its holdings in Elastic by 7.4% during the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 10,206,204 shares of the company’s stock valued at $862,322,000 after acquiring an additional 705,991 shares during the period. Finally, Qube Research & Technologies Ltd grew its position in shares of Elastic by 302.1% in the second quarter. Qube Research & Technologies Ltd now owns 932,630 shares of the company’s stock valued at $78,649,000 after purchasing an additional 700,697 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 97.03% of the company’s stock.

About Elastic

Elastic N.V. operates as a search and analytics company, offering a suite of open source and subscription-based solutions for search, observability and security use cases. Its flagship product, Elasticsearch, enables fast and scalable full-text search and analytics across large volumes of structured and unstructured data. Complementary tools such as Kibana provide visualization capabilities, while Beats and Logstash serve as lightweight data shippers and data processing pipelines, respectively.

The company was founded in 2012 by Shay Banon, who serves as chief technology officer, and Steven Schuurman.