Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) Raised to "Buy" at The Goldman Sachs Group

The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of Cloudflare (NYSE:NET - Free Report) from a sell rating to a buy rating in a research note released on Thursday morning, Marketbeat.com reports. The firm currently has $140.00 price objective on the stock, up from their prior price objective of $77.00.

NET has been the subject of a number of other reports. Mizuho lifted their price target on Cloudflare from $102.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock a "neutral" rating in a report on Friday, December 13th. UBS Group raised their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $88.00 to $95.00 and gave the stock a "neutral" rating in a research report on Friday, November 8th. Jefferies Financial Group boosted their target price on Cloudflare from $100.00 to $125.00 and gave the company a "hold" rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. Wells Fargo & Company increased their price target on shares of Cloudflare from $105.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock an "overweight" rating in a report on Friday, November 8th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus raised Cloudflare from a "hold" rating to a "buy" rating and raised their target price for the company from $95.00 to $136.00 in a report on Tuesday, December 17th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have given a hold rating and thirteen have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Cloudflare currently has an average rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $100.48.

Cloudflare Trading Up 4.5 %

NYSE NET traded up $4.86 on Thursday, reaching $112.54. The stock had a trading volume of 3,967,546 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,120,416. The company has a quick ratio of 3.37, a current ratio of 3.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32. The firm has a market capitalization of $38.62 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -432.85 and a beta of 1.10. Cloudflare has a 12-month low of $66.24 and a 12-month high of $119.42. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $101.84 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $88.66.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET - Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, November 7th. The company reported ($0.03) earnings per share for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of ($0.03). Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 5.97% and a negative return on equity of 7.18%. The firm had revenue of $430.08 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $423.65 million. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Cloudflare will post -0.1 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling at Cloudflare

In other Cloudflare news, insider Douglas James Kramer sold 3,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, November 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $88.60, for a total transaction of $265,800.00. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 185,386 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $16,425,199.60. This represents a 1.59 % 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, COO Michelle Zatlyn sold 64,100 shares of the business's stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $81.60, for a total transaction of $5,230,560.00. Following the sale, the chief operating officer now directly owns 192,177 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $15,681,643.20. This represents a 25.01 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 614,592 shares of company stock worth $60,146,600 over the last quarter. 12.83% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Hartline Investment Corp lifted its stake in Cloudflare by 7.6% in the third quarter. Hartline Investment Corp now owns 260,379 shares of the company's stock valued at $21,062,000 after buying an additional 18,426 shares during the last quarter. WIM INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Ltd bought a new stake in Cloudflare in the 3rd quarter valued at about $25,588,000. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. boosted its stake in Cloudflare by 2.7% during the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,157,815 shares of the company's stock valued at $93,656,000 after purchasing an additional 29,960 shares during the period. National Pension Service grew its position in Cloudflare by 0.9% in the 3rd quarter. National Pension Service now owns 471,923 shares of the company's stock worth $38,174,000 after purchasing an additional 4,062 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Susquehanna Fundamental Investments LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Cloudflare in the second quarter valued at approximately $7,319,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds 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.