Snowflake Target of Unusually High Options Trading (NYSE:SNOW)

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) was the target of some unusual options trading on Friday. Stock traders purchased 63,935 call options on the company. This represents an increase of approximately 25% compared to the average daily volume of 50,965 call options.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of analysts have weighed in on the stock. Wedbush reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $270.00 price target on shares of Snowflake in a report on Thursday, December 4th. KeyCorp increased their price objective on Snowflake from $275.00 to $285.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Thursday, December 4th. Scotiabank restated an “outperform” rating on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. DA Davidson reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 price objective on shares of Snowflake in a research note on Friday, January 30th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group set a $286.00 price objective on Snowflake in a research note on Monday, January 12th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $275.58.

Snowflake Stock Performance

Shares of Snowflake stock traded up $12.15 on Friday, hitting $168.86. The stock had a trading volume of 6,748,801 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,613,845. The stock has a market cap of $57.78 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -41.72 and a beta of 1.14. The company has a quick ratio of 1.37, a current ratio of 1.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.07. Snowflake has a twelve month low of $120.10 and a twelve month high of $280.67. The business’s 50 day moving average is $217.23 and its two-hundred day moving average is $226.74.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 3rd. The company reported $0.35 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.31 by $0.04. Snowflake had a negative return on equity of 45.91% and a negative net margin of 30.76%.The business had revenue of $1.21 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.18 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $0.20 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 28.7% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts forecast that Snowflake will post -2.36 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, Director Michael L. Speiser sold 50,338 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, December 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $230.65, for a total transaction of $11,610,459.70. Following the sale, the director owned 32,756 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,555,171.40. The trade was a 60.58% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, SVP Vivek Raghunathan sold 11,801 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, December 31st. The shares were sold at an average price of $220.44, for a total value of $2,601,412.44. Following the sale, the senior vice president owned 218,020 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $48,060,328.80. This trade represents a 5.13% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold 562,940 shares of company stock valued at $122,190,090 in the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 6.80% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Snowflake

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its position in Snowflake by 5.1% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 30,095,687 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,601,790,000 after acquiring an additional 1,448,094 shares during the last quarter. Jennison Associates LLC boosted its position in shares of Snowflake by 27.7% during 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 in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its stake in Snowflake by 1.4% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 6,887,073 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,541,120,000 after purchasing an additional 94,293 shares during the period. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership increased its holdings in Snowflake by 15.2% in the second quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership now owns 4,951,715 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,108,045,000 after purchasing an additional 652,485 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in Snowflake by 3.1% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 4,424,120 shares of the company’s stock worth $986,057,000 after purchasing an additional 133,059 shares in 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.