GitLab (NASDAQ:GTLB) Shares Up 9.8% - Time to Buy?

Key Points

• GitLab shares rose 9.8% in Friday trading, briefly reaching $30.74 on volume below its daily average. The move came even though the stock was still near its 200-day moving average of $30.63.
• Recent analyst sentiment has been cautious, with multiple firms cutting price targets and downgrading the stock. GitLab now has an average Hold rating and an average target price of $37.08.
• The company’s latest earnings beat expectations, with Q1 revenue up 23.2% year over year to $260.4 million and EPS of $0.30 versus the $0.23 consensus. However, insiders have been selling shares, including notable sales by directors Sytse Sijbrandij and Matthew Jacobson.

GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB - Get Free Report) shares were up 9.8% during trading on Friday . The stock traded as high as $30.74 and last traded at $30.6640. Approximately 3,362,145 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 44% from the average daily volume of 6,016,968 shares. The stock had previously closed at $27.93.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

GTLB has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Morgan Stanley decreased their price target on shares of GitLab from $38.00 to $29.00 and set a "cautious" rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, March 9th. Bank of America downgraded shares of GitLab from a "buy" rating to a "neutral" rating and reduced their target price for the company from $58.00 to $27.00 in a research note on Wednesday, April 22nd. UBS Group downgraded shares of GitLab from a "buy" rating to a "neutral" rating and reduced their price target for the stock from $44.00 to $24.00 in a research report on Thursday, April 16th. Sanford C. Bernstein reduced their price target on GitLab from $70.00 to $60.00 and set an "outperform" rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, March 4th. Finally, Truist Financial cut their price objective on GitLab from $35.00 to $25.00 and set a "hold" rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, March 4th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, seven have assigned a Buy rating, eighteen have given a Hold rating and four have given a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $37.08.

GitLab Price Performance

The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $22.92 and a 200-day simple moving average of $30.63. The stock has a market cap of $5.19 billion, a P/E ratio of -87.37 and a beta of 0.82.

GitLab (NASDAQ:GTLB - Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, March 3rd. The company reported $0.30 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.23 by $0.07. GitLab had a negative return on equity of 1.73% and a negative net margin of 5.86%.The firm had revenue of $260.40 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $252.31 million. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.33 earnings per share. The business's revenue for the quarter was up 23.2% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that GitLab Inc. will post -0.33 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, Director Sytse Sijbrandij sold 116,200 shares of GitLab stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $24.85, for a total value of $2,887,570.00. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 15,018,251 shares of the company's stock, valued at $373,203,537.35. The trade was a 0.77% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Matthew Jacobson sold 700,109 shares of GitLab stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, March 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $22.95, for a total value of $16,067,501.55. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 325 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,458.75. This represents a 99.95% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 1,392,308 shares of company stock worth $31,654,249. 10.64% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On GitLab

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its holdings in shares of GitLab by 1.6% during the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 776,521 shares of the company's stock valued at $36,496,000 after acquiring an additional 12,200 shares in the last quarter. Woodline Partners LP bought a new position in shares of GitLab during the first quarter valued at approximately $314,000. Russell Investments Group Ltd. raised its holdings in shares of GitLab by 31.6% during the second quarter. Russell Investments Group Ltd. now owns 7,112 shares of the company's stock valued at $321,000 after acquiring an additional 1,709 shares in the last quarter. California Public Employees Retirement System raised its holdings in shares of GitLab by 17.0% during the second quarter. California Public Employees Retirement System now owns 167,870 shares of the company's stock valued at $7,573,000 after acquiring an additional 24,448 shares in the last quarter. Finally, State Street Corp lifted its stake in shares of GitLab by 7.0% in the 2nd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,283,597 shares of the company's stock valued at $103,013,000 after purchasing an additional 148,713 shares during the period. 95.04% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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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