Pinnacle Associates Ltd. Acquires Shares of 2,547 Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET)

Pinnacle Associates Ltd. bought a new stake in Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET - Free Report) in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm bought 2,547 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $287,000.

Several other hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the stock. Black Swift Group LLC bought a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at about $1,617,000. AE Wealth Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at about $212,000. IMA Advisory Services Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at about $112,000. Mount Lucas Management LP bought a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the first quarter valued at about $267,000. Finally, Vestor Capital LLC lifted its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 2.0% in the first quarter. Vestor Capital LLC now owns 53,082 shares of the company's stock valued at $5,982,000 after buying an additional 1,049 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 82.68% of the company's stock.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Cloudflare news, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, July 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $184.58, for a total value of $9,669,038.72. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 381,213 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $70,364,295.54. This trade represents a 12.08% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director Carl Ledbetter sold 15,000 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $199.85, for a total transaction of $2,997,750.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 1,043,073 shares in the company, valued at approximately $208,458,139.05. The trade was a 1.42% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 688,062 shares of company stock valued at $121,498,887 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 10.89% of the company's stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

NET has been the subject of several research reports. CICC Research upgraded shares of Cloudflare from a "market perform" rating to an "outperform" rating and set a $154.00 target price for the company in a research note on Monday, May 12th. UBS Group increased their price target on shares of Cloudflare from $145.00 to $200.00 and gave the stock a "neutral" rating in a research report on Thursday, July 24th. Citigroup reissued an "outperform" rating on shares of Cloudflare in a research report on Monday. Stifel Nicolaus increased their price target on shares of Cloudflare from $175.00 to $230.00 and gave the stock a "buy" rating in a research report on Friday. Finally, Cowen reissued a "buy" rating on shares of Cloudflare in a research report on Monday, June 16th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have given a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company's stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average target price of $183.28.

Cloudflare Price Performance

Shares of Cloudflare stock traded down $0.36 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $207.32. The company had a trading volume of 4,022,302 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,717,644. The company has a current ratio of 3.20, a quick ratio of 3.20 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.90. The company has a market capitalization of $71.86 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -898.78 and a beta of 1.85. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $182.66 and a 200 day simple moving average of $147.77. Cloudflare, Inc. has a 1-year low of $69.26 and a 1-year high of $211.27.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 31st. The company reported $0.21 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.18 by $0.03. The business had revenue of $512.32 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $501.58 million. Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 4.62% and a negative return on equity of 6.31%. Cloudflare's revenue for the quarter was up 27.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.20 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Cloudflare, Inc. will post -0.11 earnings per share for the current year.

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.