Insider Selling: Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) CFO Sells 12,961 Shares of Stock

Elastic N.V. (NYSE:ESTC) CFO Navam Welihinda sold 12,961 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, June 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $60.61, for a total value of $785,566.21. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 209,254 shares in the company, valued at approximately $12,682,884.94. The trade was a 5.83% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards.

Elastic Stock Performance

Shares of ESTC stock traded down $0.56 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $60.70. 1,241,304 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,103,974. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $52.16 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $61.33. The stock has a market capitalization of $6.28 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 17.34, a P/E/G ratio of 86.23 and a beta of 1.00. Elastic N.V. has a 12-month low of $42.05 and a 12-month high of $96.07. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72, a quick ratio of 1.82 and a current ratio of 1.82.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 28th. The company reported $0.61 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.56 by $0.05. The company had revenue of $450.68 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $446.66 million. Elastic had a negative return on equity of 2.02% and a net margin of 21.14%.The business’s quarterly revenue was up 16.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.47 earnings per share. Elastic has set its FY 2027 guidance at 3.210-3.290 EPS and its Q1 2027 guidance at 0.570-0.590 EPS. On average, analysts forecast that Elastic N.V. will post 0.03 EPS for the current year.

Key Elastic News

Here are the key news stories impacting Elastic this week:

• Positive Sentiment: No clear positive company-specific catalyst was disclosed in the latest headlines.
• Neutral Sentiment: Several executives and insiders, including the CEO, CFO, CTO, CRO, CAO, and another insider, sold shares on June 9 at $60.61. The company said the transactions were made to cover tax withholding obligations tied to vesting equity awards, which makes them less concerning than open-market selling, but the large number of sales can still weigh on investor sentiment. Article
• Neutral Sentiment: Elastic also disclosed a new sales and marketing risk related to regulatory hurdles and budget pressures in government contracts, suggesting potential headwinds for revenue from public-sector customers. Article
• Negative Sentiment: The cluster of insider sales, especially the CEO’s and CFO’s larger transactions, may be read by investors as a cautious signal even though the company framed them as tax-related rather than discretionary selling.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Elastic

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. AQR Capital Management LLC boosted its position in Elastic by 153.4% during the 4th quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 7,545,081 shares of the company’s stock worth $569,201,000 after purchasing an additional 4,567,720 shares during the period. First Trust Advisors LP boosted its position in Elastic by 516.1% during the 1st quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 2,627,636 shares of the company’s stock worth $131,356,000 after purchasing an additional 2,201,140 shares during the period. Pictet Asset Management Holding SA boosted its position in Elastic by 43.2% during the 1st quarter. Pictet Asset Management Holding SA now owns 6,492,717 shares of the company’s stock worth $324,550,000 after purchasing an additional 1,958,219 shares during the period. FIL Ltd boosted its position in Elastic by 36.9% during the 4th quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 3,628,748 shares of the company’s stock worth $273,753,000 after purchasing an additional 977,578 shares during the period. Finally, Alyeska Investment Group L.P. boosted its position in Elastic by 490.4% during the 3rd quarter. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. now owns 1,113,503 shares of the company’s stock worth $94,080,000 after purchasing an additional 924,911 shares during the period. 97.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. Zacks Research downgraded shares of Elastic from a “hold” rating to a “strong sell” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. TD Cowen reduced their price target on shares of Elastic from $65.00 to $60.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, May 26th. Piper Sandler dropped their price objective on shares of Elastic from $110.00 to $85.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, February 27th. Cantor Fitzgerald dropped their price objective on shares of Elastic from $66.00 to $59.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th. Finally, Barclays lowered their target price on shares of Elastic from $76.00 to $68.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, May 29th. Eighteen research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, ten have assigned a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $80.04.

About Elastic

Elastic N.V. operates as a search and analytics company, offering a suite of open source and subscription-based solutions for search, observability and security use cases. Its flagship product, Elasticsearch, enables fast and scalable full-text search and analytics across large volumes of structured and unstructured data. Complementary tools such as Kibana provide visualization capabilities, while Beats and Logstash serve as lightweight data shippers and data processing pipelines, respectively.

The company was founded in 2012 by Shay Banon, who serves as chief technology officer, and Steven Schuurman.