Royal Bank of Canada Forecasts Strong Price Appreciation for Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Stock

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) had its target price increased by Royal Bank of Canada from $123.00 to $170.00 in a report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The firm currently has an “outperform” rating on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada’s price objective indicates a potential upside of 0.69% from the stock’s current price.

NET has been the subject of several other reports. Mizuho boosted their price objective on Cloudflare from $102.00 to $125.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, December 13th. Robert W. Baird reiterated a “neutral” rating and issued a $140.00 price objective (up from $125.00) on shares of Cloudflare in a report on Monday. Baird R W downgraded shares of Cloudflare from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday. Citigroup upgraded Cloudflare from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their target price for the stock from $95.00 to $145.00 in a report on Friday, January 17th. Finally, JMP Securities increased their price objective on Cloudflare from $135.00 to $180.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a report on Friday. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have assigned a hold rating and twelve have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $127.08.

Cloudflare Stock Up 19.3 %

Shares of NET stock traded up $27.32 on Friday, hitting $168.84. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 11,672,299 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,658,616. Cloudflare has a fifty-two week low of $66.24 and a fifty-two week high of $171.38. The stock has a market capitalization of $57.95 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -649.39 and a beta of 1.12. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a current ratio of 3.37 and a quick ratio of 3.37. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $116.71 and its 200-day moving average price is $95.92.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 6th. The company reported ($0.03) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.18 by ($0.21). Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 5.97% and a negative return on equity of 7.18%. Research analysts anticipate that Cloudflare will post -0.1 EPS for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $95.59, for a total value of $5,007,386.56. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 192,177 shares in the company, valued at $18,370,199.43. This represents a 21.42 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 15,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $136.63, for a total value of $2,049,450.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 252,869 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,549,491.47. The trade was a 5.60 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 633,738 shares of company stock worth $69,632,506. 12.83% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Cloudflare

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of NET. CVA Family Office LLC lifted its position in shares of Cloudflare by 121.3% during the 3rd quarter. CVA Family Office LLC now owns 312 shares of the company’s stock valued at $25,000 after buying an additional 171 shares during the last quarter. Capital Performance Advisors LLP bought a new stake in Cloudflare in the 3rd quarter valued at about $38,000. Quarry LP lifted its holdings in Cloudflare by 38.6% during the third quarter. Quarry LP now owns 478 shares of the company’s stock valued at $39,000 after purchasing an additional 133 shares during the last quarter. Quest Partners LLC purchased a new position in shares of Cloudflare in the third quarter worth about $54,000. Finally, Larson Financial Group LLC raised its position in shares of Cloudflare by 1,988.5% in the fourth quarter. Larson Financial Group LLC now owns 543 shares of the company’s stock valued at $58,000 after purchasing an additional 517 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

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.