Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) Shares Down 8.8% on Analyst Downgrade

Shares of Snowflake Inc. (NYSE:SNOW) fell 8.8% on Monday after Stifel Nicolaus lowered their price target on the stock from $280.00 to $225.00. Stifel Nicolaus currently has a buy rating on the stock. Snowflake traded as low as $155.38 and last traded at $157.2410. 11,093,918 shares traded hands during trading, an increase of 83% from the average session volume of 6,055,134 shares. The stock had previously closed at $172.50.

Other equities research analysts also recently issued research reports about the company. Argus raised Snowflake from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 target price for the company in a report on Thursday, January 8th. Robert W. Baird raised their price target on Snowflake from $260.00 to $270.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. KeyCorp cut their price objective on shares of Snowflake from $285.00 to $235.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. Sanford C. Bernstein reiterated a “market perform” rating and set a $237.00 target price on shares of Snowflake in a research report on Thursday, December 4th. Finally, Canaccord Genuity Group lifted their price target on shares of Snowflake from $260.00 to $270.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, December 4th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-three have issued a Buy rating, four have issued a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Snowflake presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $265.63.

Insider Buying and Selling at Snowflake

In related news, Director Frank Slootman sold 100,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $176.91, for a total value of $17,691,000.00. Following the sale, the director owned 50,329 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,903,703.39. This trade represents a 66.52% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, EVP Christian Kleinerman sold 10,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $197.09, for a total transaction of $1,970,900.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 461,351 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $90,927,668.59. The trade was a 2.12% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold 713,681 shares of company stock worth $148,264,518 in the last ninety days. Insiders own 6.80% of the company’s stock.

Key Snowflake News

Here are the key news stories impacting Snowflake this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Product/engineering: Snowflake expanded Cortex Code CLI to support any data source (starts with dbt and Apache Airflow), making AI coding assistance available in developers’ preferred environments — a commercial and developer-engagement positive. Snowflake Cortex Code Expands
• Positive Sentiment: Customer adoption: Wolfspeed has expanded use of Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to unify factory, supply‑chain and enterprise data — a tangible win that validates Snowflake’s AI use‑case momentum. Wolfspeed Adoption
• Positive Sentiment: Analyst stance: Citi maintained a Buy rating and called the recent ~30% pullback an overreaction despite lowering its price target — this supports a bullish view from a major shop. Citi Note
• Neutral Sentiment: Earnings calendar: Snowflake reports fiscal Q4 after the close on Feb. 25; investors are focused on revenue growth trends, operating margins and forward guidance. Earnings Preview
• Neutral Sentiment: Pre‑earnings commentary: Analyst pieces (Zacks, Yahoo summaries) frame Snowflake as benefiting from an expanding partner and customer base but note competitive pressure and AI‑era spending dynamics. Zacks Preview
• Negative Sentiment: Analyst target cut: BTIG lowered its price target materially (from $312 to $235) while keeping a Buy — the cut feeds short‑term downside pressure despite the maintained rating. BTIG PT Cut
• Negative Sentiment: Insider selling: A Snowflake director sold roughly $17.7M of stock recently; such sales can increase selling pressure and are being flagged by the market. Insider Sale

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Snowflake

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Virtu Financial LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Snowflake in the fourth quarter worth $1,706,000. Copos Capital S.a r.l. acquired a new position in shares of Snowflake in the fourth quarter worth $35,000. MV Capital Management Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Snowflake during the fourth quarter worth $32,000. Sunbelt Securities Inc. grew its stake in Snowflake by 1.8% in the fourth quarter. Sunbelt Securities Inc. now owns 4,793 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,051,000 after purchasing an additional 86 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Josh Arnold Investment Consultant LLC bought a new position in Snowflake during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $18,646,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 65.10% of the company’s stock.

Snowflake Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.07, a current ratio of 1.37 and a quick ratio of 1.37. The stock has a market capitalization of $53.81 billion, a P/E ratio of -38.92 and a beta of 1.14. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $204.30 and its 200-day moving average is $224.03.

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 3rd. The company reported $0.35 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 company had revenue of $1.21 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.18 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.20 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities analysts anticipate that Snowflake Inc. will post -2.36 earnings per share for the current year.

Snowflake Company Profile

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.