Investors Buy Large Volume of Call Options on Cloudflare (NYSE:NET)

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) was the recipient of some unusual options trading activity on Monday. Stock investors purchased 18,720 call options on the company. This is an increase of approximately 20% compared to the average daily volume of 15,541 call options.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research firms recently weighed in on NET. Robert W. Baird set a $260.00 target price on shares of Cloudflare and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, February 11th. KeyCorp restated an “overweight” rating on shares of Cloudflare in a research note on Wednesday, February 11th. DZ Bank upgraded shares of Cloudflare from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $215.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Friday, February 13th. New Street Research set a $140.00 target price on shares of Cloudflare in a research note on Wednesday, February 11th. Finally, Piper Sandler lifted their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $220.00 to $222.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday, February 11th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, eighteen have issued a Buy rating, eight have assigned a Hold rating and two have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Cloudflare has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $233.38.

Cloudflare Stock Up 10.1%

Shares of NET stock opened at $183.92 on Tuesday. The stock has a market cap of $64.73 billion, a P/E ratio of -634.17 and a beta of 1.87. Cloudflare has a 52 week low of $100.25 and a 52 week high of $260.00. The company has a quick ratio of 1.98, a current ratio of 1.98 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.35. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $194.62 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $201.50.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, February 10th. The company reported $0.28 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.27 by $0.01. The business had revenue of $614.51 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $591.67 million. Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 4.72% and a negative return on equity of 7.24%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 33.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $0.19 EPS. Analysts predict that Cloudflare will post -0.11 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, insider Michelle Zatlyn sold 25,641 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, March 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $189.50, for a total transaction of $4,858,969.50. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 34,514 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $6,540,403. The trade was a 42.62% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Matthew Prince sold 659 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, April 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $223.62, for a total transaction of $147,365.58. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 406,315 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $90,860,160.30. The trade was a 0.16% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 598,606 shares of company stock worth $116,282,984. Company insiders own 10.89% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Cloudflare

Several hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of NET. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Cloudflare in the 4th quarter worth $718,316,000. Jennison Associates LLC increased its holdings in shares of Cloudflare by 802.6% in the 4th quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 1,863,612 shares of the company’s stock worth $367,411,000 after buying an additional 1,657,144 shares during the last quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC increased its holdings in shares of Cloudflare by 4,042.6% in the 4th quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC now owns 1,399,378 shares of the company’s stock worth $275,887,000 after buying an additional 1,365,598 shares during the last quarter. Groupama Asset Managment increased its holdings in shares of Cloudflare by 82.6% in the 3rd quarter. Groupama Asset Managment now owns 2,100,000 shares of the company’s stock worth $450,639,000 after buying an additional 950,000 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Cloudflare by 2.6% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 32,317,249 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,934,958,000 after buying an additional 821,684 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

Cloudflare Company Profile

Cloudflare, Inc is a global web infrastructure and security company that provides a suite of services designed to improve the performance, reliability and security of internet properties. Its core offerings include a content delivery network (CDN), distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, managed DNS, and a web application firewall (WAF). Cloudflare also provides tools for bot management, SSL/TLS, load balancing and rate limiting to help organizations maintain uptime and protect web applications from attack.

In addition to traditional edge and security services, Cloudflare has expanded into edge computing and developer platforms.