Needham & Company LLC Forecasts Strong Price Appreciation for Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Stock

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET - Get Free Report) had its target price raised by investment analysts at Needham & Company LLC from $145.00 to $160.00 in a report released on Friday, MarketBeat reports. The firm presently has a "buy" rating on the stock. Needham & Company LLC's target price would indicate a potential upside of 6.39% from the stock's current price.

NET has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Citigroup upgraded shares of Cloudflare from a "neutral" rating to a "buy" rating and raised their price target for the company from $95.00 to $145.00 in a report on Friday, January 17th. JMP Securities raised their target price on Cloudflare from $135.00 to $180.00 and gave the company a "market outperform" rating in a report on Friday, February 7th. Scotiabank upped their price target on Cloudflare from $87.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock a "sector perform" rating in a research note on Tuesday, January 21st. Wells Fargo & Company raised their price objective on Cloudflare from $135.00 to $150.00 and gave the company an "overweight" rating in a research note on Monday, January 27th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their target price on Cloudflare from $183.00 to $161.00 and set a "buy" rating for the company in a research report on Friday, March 14th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating, thirteen have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of "Hold" and a consensus price target of $141.79.

Cloudflare Stock Up 5.6%

NET traded up $8.03 during trading on Friday, reaching $150.39. 5,127,800 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 3,122,072. The stock's 50-day simple moving average is $115.99 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $118.33. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a current ratio of 3.37 and a quick ratio of 3.37. Cloudflare has a fifty-two week low of $66.24 and a fifty-two week high of $177.37. The stock has a market cap of $51.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -683.59 and a beta of 1.78.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET - Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, May 8th. The company reported $0.16 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts' consensus estimates of $0.17 by ($0.01). The firm had revenue of $479.09 million for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $469.49 million. Cloudflare had a negative return on equity of 5.52% and a negative net margin of 4.72%. The firm's revenue for the quarter was up 26.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.16 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Cloudflare will post -0.11 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other Cloudflare news, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 28,635 shares of the company's stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $162.07, for a total transaction of $4,640,874.45. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 293,582 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $47,580,834.74. This represents a 8.89% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 25th. The shares were sold at an average price of $143.39, for a total value of $7,511,341.76. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 413,413 shares in the company, valued at approximately $59,279,290.07. This represents a 11.25% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 492,492 shares of company stock worth $63,757,685. Company insiders own 12.83% of the company's stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Cloudflare

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Capital World Investors grew its position in shares of Cloudflare by 0.7% during the 4th quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 35,409,307 shares of the company's stock worth $3,812,942,000 after buying an additional 260,415 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its stake in Cloudflare by 1.8% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,836,909 shares of the company's stock valued at $3,475,011,000 after purchasing an additional 538,850 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Cloudflare by 1.4% in the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,903,219 shares of the company's stock valued at $526,986,000 after purchasing an additional 68,661 shares in the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. raised its holdings in Cloudflare by 34.5% in the first 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 period. Finally, Groupama Asset Managment bought a new position in shares of Cloudflare during the fourth quarter worth $269,200,000. Institutional investors own 82.68% of the company's stock.

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.