DZ Bank Downgrades Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) to Sell

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) was downgraded by equities researchers at DZ Bank from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report issued on Tuesday, MarketBeat.com reports. They presently have a $145.00 price objective on the stock. DZ Bank’s target price would indicate a potential downside of 16.08% from the stock’s current price.

Several other equities analysts also recently commented on NET. Cantor Fitzgerald upped their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $111.00 to $149.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, February 7th. Mizuho upped their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $130.00 to $160.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Monday. Needham & Company LLC upped their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $110.00 to $160.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, February 3rd. Stifel Nicolaus upped their price objective on shares of Cloudflare from $136.00 to $175.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 7th. Finally, Baird R W downgraded shares of Cloudflare from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, February 3rd. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have given a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $135.28.

Cloudflare Price Performance

NYSE:NET opened at $172.78 on Tuesday. Cloudflare has a 1-year low of $66.24 and a 1-year high of $176.73. The company has a current ratio of 3.37, a quick ratio of 3.37 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $122.83 and a 200 day simple moving average of $98.96. The stock has a market capitalization of $59.30 billion, a PE ratio of -785.36 and a beta of 1.12.

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 6th. The company reported ($0.03) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.18 by ($0.21). Cloudflare had a negative net margin of 4.72% and a negative return on equity of 5.52%. On average, research analysts expect that Cloudflare will post -0.04 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CFO Thomas J. Seifert sold 28,635 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $95.03, for a total value of $2,721,184.05. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 252,869 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $24,030,141.07. This represents a 10.17 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CEO Matthew Prince sold 52,384 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $89.06, for a total transaction of $4,665,319.04. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 192,177 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $17,115,283.62. This trade represents a 21.42 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 581,354 shares of company stock valued at $64,625,120 over the last quarter. 12.83% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in NET. CVA Family Office LLC increased its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 121.3% in the third 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 period. Capital Performance Advisors LLP acquired a new position in shares of Cloudflare in the third quarter valued at approximately $38,000. Quarry LP increased its stake in shares of Cloudflare by 38.6% in the third quarter. Quarry LP now owns 478 shares of the company’s stock valued at $39,000 after buying an additional 133 shares during the period. Quest Partners LLC acquired a new position in shares of Cloudflare in the third quarter valued at approximately $54,000. Finally, Larson Financial Group LLC increased its stake 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 buying an additional 517 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.68% of the company’s stock.

Cloudflare Company Profile

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.