First Trust Advisors LP Lowers Holdings in Snowflake Inc. $SNOW

Key Points

• First Trust Advisors LP cut its Snowflake stake by 13.2% in Q1, selling 160,171 shares and leaving it with about 1.05 million shares valued at roughly $158.8 million.
• Insiders have been heavy sellers: Directors Mark Garrett and Frank Slootman sold large blocks of stock, and total insider selling over the last 90 days reached 1.8 million shares worth about $421.7 million.
• Snowflake beat earnings expectations for the latest quarter, reporting EPS of $0.39 versus $0.32 expected and revenue of $1.39 billion, while analysts remain broadly bullish with a consensus Moderate Buy rating and an average price target of $296.27.

First Trust Advisors LP lowered its holdings in Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW - Free Report) by 13.2% in the first quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 1,052,771 shares of the company's stock after selling 160,171 shares during the period. First Trust Advisors LP owned approximately 0.30% of Snowflake worth $158,779,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other large investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Danica Pension Livsforsikringsaktieselskab purchased a new position in Snowflake in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $15,457,000. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. increased its position in shares of Snowflake by 12.6% during the first quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 26,213 shares of the company's stock worth $3,953,000 after acquiring an additional 2,937 shares during the period. Andra AP fonden increased its position in shares of Snowflake by 2.7% during the first quarter. Andra AP fonden now owns 49,295 shares of the company's stock worth $7,435,000 after acquiring an additional 1,300 shares during the period. Wilkerson Advisory Group LLC increased its position in shares of Snowflake by 1,035.9% during the first quarter. Wilkerson Advisory Group LLC now owns 443 shares of the company's stock worth $67,000 after acquiring an additional 404 shares during the period. Finally, MWA Asset Management acquired a new stake in shares of Snowflake in the first quarter valued at $43,000. 65.10% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Insider Activity

In related news, Director Mark Garrett sold 100,000 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $250.00, for a total value of $25,000,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 8,801 shares of the company's stock, valued at $2,200,250. This represents a 91.91% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, Director Frank Slootman sold 437,076 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $252.43, for a total transaction of $110,331,094.68. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 38,046 shares in the company, valued at $9,603,951.78. This represents a 91.99% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last 90 days, insiders have sold 1,802,015 shares of company stock worth $421,739,629. 4.80% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Snowflake Stock Performance

Shares of SNOW stock opened at $268.32 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 1.05, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $234.60 and a 200 day moving average price of $194.52. The company has a market cap of $93.00 billion, a P/E ratio of -76.23 and a beta of 1.35. Snowflake Inc. has a 12 month low of $118.30 and a 12 month high of $284.99.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW - Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, May 27th. The company reported $0.39 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.32 by $0.07. The firm had revenue of $1.39 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.32 billion. Snowflake had a negative return on equity of 50.50% and a negative net margin of 23.79%.Snowflake's revenue for the quarter was up 33.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $0.24 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts predict that Snowflake Inc. will post -1.84 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research firms recently issued reports on SNOW. BTIG Research lifted their target price on Snowflake from $280.00 to $325.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a report on Wednesday, June 3rd. Morgan Stanley upped their price target on Snowflake from $245.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an "overweight" rating in a report on Thursday, May 28th. Sanford C. Bernstein increased their price target on Snowflake from $195.00 to $250.00 and gave the company a "market perform" rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Citizens Jmp reiterated a "market outperform" rating and issued a $325.00 price objective on shares of Snowflake in a research note on Tuesday, May 19th. Finally, Raymond James Financial reissued an "outperform" rating and set a $275.00 price objective on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Thirty-four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $296.27.

Snowflake 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.

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