Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Shares Gap Up - Here's Why

Key Points

• Snowflake shares gapped up at the open, rising from a prior close of $164.24 to $172.48 and trading near $173.73, signaling strong early buying interest.
• Analyst sentiment remains broadly positive, with Citizens JMP reaffirming a $325 price target and Wall Street consensus still at a Moderate Buy with a $242.19 average target.
• Recent news flow was mixed but mostly supportive: a new AVEVA collaboration could aid industrial AI adoption, while insider sales and some institutional trimming may weigh on sentiment.

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW - Get Free Report)'s share price gapped up before the market opened on Tuesday . The stock had previously closed at $164.24, but opened at $172.48. Snowflake shares last traded at $173.7270, with a volume of 3,366,988 shares.

Snowflake News Roundup

Here are the key news stories impacting Snowflake this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Citizens JMP reaffirmed its “market outperform” rating on Snowflake and kept a $325 price target, implying substantial upside versus recent trading levels. Benzinga
• Positive Sentiment: AVEVA announced a collaboration with Snowflake to help industrial customers unify IT and OT data and accelerate industrial AI, which could support future platform adoption and revenue growth. Yahoo Finance
• Positive Sentiment: Analyst coverage remains broadly constructive, with recent notes highlighting favorable checks ahead of results and multiple buy/outperform ratings, supporting the view that Wall Street still sees upside in Snowflake. MSN
• Neutral Sentiment: Snowflake is also being mentioned in broader AI-stock commentary and comparisons, which may keep investor attention on the name but does not appear to be a direct fundamental catalyst. Analytics Insight
• Negative Sentiment: Recent disclosure chatter around insider selling and heavy institutional trimming could temper enthusiasm, even though these moves do not necessarily reflect near-term operating weakness. Quiver Quantitative

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

SNOW has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. Truist Financial set a $125.00 price objective on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Wednesday, April 15th. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their target price on Snowflake from $286.00 to $246.00 and set a "buy" rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, February 11th. Barclays cut their price target on Snowflake from $204.00 to $192.00 and set an "equal weight" rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, February 26th. Oppenheimer restated a "buy" rating on shares of Snowflake in a research note on Thursday, February 26th. Finally, KeyCorp dropped their price target on shares of Snowflake from $235.00 to $200.00 and set an "overweight" rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, April 15th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-three have issued a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus target price of $242.19.

Snowflake Price Performance

The company's 50 day moving average price is $154.76 and its 200 day moving average price is $195.52. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18, a quick ratio of 1.30 and a current ratio of 1.30. The company has a market cap of $58.07 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -42.58 and a beta of 1.08.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 25th. The company reported $0.32 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts' consensus estimates of $0.27 by $0.05. Snowflake had a negative net margin of 28.43% and a negative return on equity of 50.61%. The firm had revenue of $1.28 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.25 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $0.30 EPS. The company's revenue was up 30.1% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts predict that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.16 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Transactions at Snowflake

In other Snowflake news, SVP Vivek Raghunathan sold 3,876 shares of the company's stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, April 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $152.80, for a total transaction of $592,252.80. Following the transaction, the senior vice president directly owned 273,323 shares in the company, valued at approximately $41,763,754.40. This represents a 1.40% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, March 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $165.01, for a total value of $1,650,100.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 510,477 shares in the company, valued at approximately $84,233,809.77. This trade represents a 1.92% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders sold a total of 384,313 shares of company stock worth $64,308,373 in the last quarter. 6.80% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Snowflake

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of SNOW. Federated Hermes Inc. raised its stake in shares of Snowflake by 13.5% in the 3rd quarter. Federated Hermes Inc. now owns 408,037 shares of the company's stock valued at $92,047,000 after purchasing an additional 48,411 shares during the period. Assetmark Inc. raised its stake in shares of Snowflake by 99.1% in the 4th quarter. Assetmark Inc. now owns 198,655 shares of the company's stock valued at $43,577,000 after purchasing an additional 98,870 shares during the period. Jennison Associates LLC raised its stake in shares of Snowflake by 27.7% in the 4th quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 11,603,302 shares of the company's stock valued at $2,545,300,000 after purchasing an additional 2,519,413 shares during the period. William Blair Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Snowflake in the 3rd quarter valued at about $116,882,000. Finally, Penserra Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Snowflake by 32.8% in the third quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 153,358 shares of the company's stock valued at $34,586,000 after purchasing an additional 37,911 shares during the last quarter. 65.10% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Snowflake

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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