Franklin Resources Inc. Increases Stock Position in GitLab Inc. $GTLB

Key Points

• Franklin Resources Inc. increased its stake in GitLab by 35.6%, buying an additional 926,824 shares to hold 3,533,659 shares (about 2.12% of the company) valued at roughly $159.3 million at quarter-end.
• GitLab recently beat quarterly estimates (EPS $0.30 vs. $0.23 expected; revenue $260.4M, +23.2% YoY) but remains unprofitable with a negative net margin and negative PE, and its stock trades near the 52-week low (~$22.82).
• Institutional investors own 95.04% of GitLab, insiders sold about 503,744 shares (~$18.6M) in the past three months, and analysts carry a consensus "Hold" rating with an average target of $39.62.

Franklin Resources Inc. raised its holdings in shares of GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB - Free Report) by 35.6% during the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 3,533,659 shares of the company's stock after purchasing an additional 926,824 shares during the period. Franklin Resources Inc. owned approximately 2.12% of GitLab worth $159,297,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also modified their holdings of GTLB. Blue Trust Inc. boosted its position in shares of GitLab by 3.6% during the third quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 8,770 shares of the company's stock valued at $395,000 after buying an additional 302 shares during the last quarter. Summit Global Investments raised its position in GitLab by 2.2% in the 2nd quarter. Summit Global Investments now owns 15,193 shares of the company's stock worth $685,000 after buying an additional 331 shares during the last quarter. Jones Financial Companies Lllp lifted its stake in GitLab by 20.1% during the 3rd quarter. Jones Financial Companies Lllp now owns 2,139 shares of the company's stock valued at $102,000 after acquiring an additional 358 shares during the period. Prostatis Group LLC lifted its stake in GitLab by 6.5% during the 3rd quarter. Prostatis Group LLC now owns 6,051 shares of the company's stock valued at $273,000 after acquiring an additional 368 shares during the period. Finally, Truist Financial Corp boosted its holdings in shares of GitLab by 1.6% during the 3rd quarter. Truist Financial Corp now owns 24,473 shares of the company's stock valued at $1,103,000 after acquiring an additional 389 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 95.04% of the company's stock.

GitLab Stock Performance

NASDAQ:GTLB opened at $22.82 on Friday. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $31.24 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $39.87. GitLab Inc. has a 52-week low of $22.66 and a 52-week high of $54.08. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.84 billion, a PE ratio of -65.20 and a beta of 0.79.

GitLab (NASDAQ:GTLB - Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, March 3rd. The company reported $0.30 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.23 by $0.07. The firm had revenue of $260.40 million for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $252.31 million. GitLab had a negative return on equity of 1.79% and a negative net margin of 5.86%.The business's quarterly revenue was up 23.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $0.33 EPS. Equities analysts forecast that GitLab Inc. will post -0.31 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Weiss Ratings restated a "sell (d-)" rating on shares of GitLab in a research report on Monday, December 22nd. Sanford C. Bernstein decreased their target price on shares of GitLab from $70.00 to $60.00 and set an "outperform" rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, March 4th. Macquarie Infrastructure lowered GitLab from an "outperform" rating to a "neutral" rating and cut their price objective for the stock from $70.00 to $40.00 in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group lowered their target price on GitLab from $48.00 to $42.00 and set a "neutral" rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, December 3rd. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on GitLab from $52.00 to $53.00 and gave the stock a "neutral" rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 3rd. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twelve have issued a Buy rating, thirteen have issued a Hold rating and three have given a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, GitLab presently has a consensus rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $39.62.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CAO Simon Mundy sold 2,756 shares of GitLab stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, December 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $38.42, for a total transaction of $105,885.52. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer owned 47,184 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $1,812,809.28. This trade represents a 5.52% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CFO James Shen sold 2,538 shares of the business's stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, December 31st. The stock was sold at an average price of $38.08, for a total value of $96,647.04. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 52,284 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,990,974.72. This represents a 4.63% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold 503,744 shares of company stock valued at $18,590,495 over the last three months. Insiders own 16.37% of the company's stock.

GitLab Company Profile

GitLab Inc NASDAQ: GTLB is a leading provider of a unified DevOps platform designed to streamline the software development lifecycle. Founded in 2011 by Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Sid Sijbrandij, the company initially gained recognition for its open-source Git repository manager. Over time, GitLab expanded its offerings to encompass planning, source code management, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), security testing, and monitoring in a single application. This integrated approach enables development teams to collaborate efficiently, reduce toolchain complexity, and accelerate release cycles.

The GitLab platform is offered through both cloud-hosted and self-managed deployment models, catering to organizations of all sizes.

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