Snowflake (NASDAQ: SNOW ) has been in the cloud industry “penalty box” since former CEO Frank Slootman retired suddenly at the end of February. Snowflake is a cloud data warehouse that competes with Cloud Giants like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN ) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ), as well as privately held competitors including Databricks, Motherduck and Clickhouse.
A CEO change and a major data breach led some investors to have doubts about the company. Revenue growth is slowing but remains rapid.
Recently, Zacks.com users have been paying close attention to Snowflake (SNOW). This makes it worthwhile to examine what the stock has in store.
Snowflake has a growing problem on its hands after AT&T said on Friday that data from "nearly all" wireless customers were connected to a breach. Prior to Friday, the most notable companies tied to the Snowflake attack were Advance Auto Parts, Lending Tree, Ticketmaster operator Live Nation Entertainment and Santander Bank.
The interconnected global operating landscape has never held more opportunity for businesses. Or more threats.
U.S. stock futures were mixed this morning, with the Dow futures gaining around 10 points on Friday.
Snowflake shares continued to remain in the penalty box over recent months, thanks to a deteriorating short-term margin outlook and negative publicity from a data breach. Meanwhile, several company-specific growth drivers are lining up in the background that could visibly re-accelerate topline growth already this year. Combined with reasonable valuation levels, I continue to rate shares as a Strong Buy even if I've been fooled twice by the company recently.
Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW ), which specializes in software for cloud-based data warehousing, certainly wasn't a darling of the market in 2024's first half. However, contrarian investors should definitely put Snowflake on their watch lists.
Snowflake's data warehouse and data lake are the vital funnels for AI ingestion and should remain an essential cog in the AI revolution. Its market leadership in data warehousing will keep it as a preferred provider for the AI data deluge. It has strong competitive advantages of an agnostic platform, switching costs, and the network effects of a shared marketplace.
Snowflake Inc. is down 31% in 2024 due to slowing growth and leadership changes, but recent improvements in the chart picture suggest the stock has bottomed out. Snowflake's sales trajectory remains strong with annual growth rates exceeding 30%, generating substantial free cash flow and raising product sales forecast. Despite challenges, Snowflake's technical indicators are bullish, sales multiple is low compared to peers, and potential for re-rating to $230 intrinsic value.
Shares of Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) are dropping alongside the rest of the cloud sector today, down 2.9% at $137.46 at last glance.
Needham analyst Mike Cikos reiterated Snowflake Inc SNOW with a Buy and a $210 price target.