Morgan Stanley Upgrades Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) to “Overweight”

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) was upgraded by research analysts at Morgan Stanley from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating in a research note issued on Monday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a $130.00 target price on the stock, up from their prior target price of $92.00. Morgan Stanley’s price target would indicate a potential upside of 30.22% from the company’s previous close.

Other equities research analysts have also issued research reports about the stock. UBS Group lifted their target price on shares of Cloudflare from $88.00 to $95.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, November 8th. Scotiabank increased their target price on Cloudflare from $85.00 to $87.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, November 8th. Susquehanna lifted their price target on Cloudflare from $80.00 to $85.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday, August 5th. Mizuho increased their price objective on Cloudflare from $92.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, October 17th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company boosted their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $105.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, November 8th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $94.40.

Cloudflare Trading Up 0.5 %

NET opened at $99.83 on Monday. Cloudflare has a one year low of $66.24 and a one year high of $116.00. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a current ratio of 3.37 and a quick ratio of 3.37. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $90.25 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $82.52. The firm has a market capitalization of $34.26 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -383.96 and a beta of 1.10.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, November 7th. The company reported ($0.03) EPS for the quarter, meeting analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.03). The company had revenue of $430.08 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $423.65 million. Cloudflare had a negative return on equity of 7.18% and a negative net margin of 5.97%. Analysts predict that Cloudflare will post -0.11 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other news, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 15,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $78.05, for a total value of $1,170,750.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 281,403 shares in the company, valued at $21,963,504.15. This represents a 5.06 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, insider Douglas James Kramer sold 3,000 shares of Cloudflare stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $81.53, for a total value of $244,590.00. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 185,386 shares in the company, valued at $15,114,520.58. This trade represents a 1.59 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 606,952 shares of company stock valued at $53,078,202 in the last quarter. 12.83% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cloudflare

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. B. Riley Wealth Advisors Inc. increased its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 26.6% in the first quarter. B. Riley Wealth Advisors Inc. now owns 3,936 shares of the company’s stock worth $381,000 after purchasing an additional 828 shares in the last quarter. Comerica Bank raised its holdings in Cloudflare by 19.9% during the first quarter. Comerica Bank now owns 28,556 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,765,000 after acquiring an additional 4,733 shares during the period. Swedbank AB purchased a new position in shares of Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at about $802,000. Cetera Investment Advisers grew its position in shares of Cloudflare by 93.8% during the first quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 86,487 shares of the company’s stock worth $8,374,000 after purchasing an additional 41,871 shares in the last quarter. Finally, DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale raised its stake in Cloudflare by 20.2% during the 1st quarter. DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale now owns 54,576 shares of the company’s stock valued at $5,296,000 after purchasing an additional 9,159 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

Cloudflare Company Profile

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.