Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) Shares Gap Up – What’s Next?

Shares of Elastic N.V. (NYSE:ESTC) gapped up before the market opened on Thursday . The stock had previously closed at $53.90, but opened at $57.10. Elastic shares last traded at $58.0460, with a volume of 451,584 shares traded.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

ESTC has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Morgan Stanley cut their price objective on shares of Elastic from $80.00 to $73.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Monday, March 2nd. TD Cowen cut their price objective on shares of Elastic from $65.00 to $60.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday. Barclays cut their price objective on shares of Elastic from $78.00 to $76.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Friday, February 27th. Royal Bank Of Canada cut their price objective on shares of Elastic from $80.00 to $70.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, April 16th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group initiated coverage on shares of Elastic in a report on Tuesday, April 21st. They issued a “neutral” rating and a $50.00 price objective for the company. Eighteen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, twelve have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Elastic presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $86.96.

Elastic Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72, a quick ratio of 1.82 and a current ratio of 1.82. The company has a market cap of $6.04 billion, a PE ratio of -72.97, a PEG ratio of 102.95 and a beta of 0.88. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $50.16 and its 200 day simple moving average is $63.05.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 26th. The company reported $0.73 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.64 by $0.09. Elastic had a negative net margin of 5.04% and a negative return on equity of 2.34%. The company had revenue of $449.88 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $438.37 million. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.63 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Elastic N.V. will post 0.04 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CTO Shay Banon sold 4,283 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, March 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $52.28, for a total value of $223,915.24. Following the sale, the chief technology officer directly owned 4,354,945 shares in the company, valued at approximately $227,676,524.60. This trade represents a 0.10% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CRO Mark Eugene Dodds sold 3,723 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, March 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $52.28, for a total transaction of $194,638.44. Following the completion of the sale, the executive owned 152,563 shares in the company, valued at $7,975,993.64. The trade was a 2.38% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last three months, insiders sold 38,188 shares of company stock worth $1,996,469. 12.70% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of ESTC. J. Safra Sarasin Holding AG lifted its holdings in shares of Elastic by 43.0% in the fourth quarter. J. Safra Sarasin Holding AG now owns 189,138 shares of the company’s stock valued at $14,269,000 after purchasing an additional 56,892 shares in the last quarter. Cinctive Capital Management LP purchased a new stake in shares of Elastic in the third quarter valued at about $13,608,000. Thematics Asset Management lifted its holdings in shares of Elastic by 10.2% in the third quarter. Thematics Asset Management now owns 523,283 shares of the company’s stock valued at $44,212,000 after purchasing an additional 48,346 shares in the last quarter. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of Elastic by 50.8% in the third quarter. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. now owns 891,279 shares of the company’s stock valued at $75,304,000 after purchasing an additional 300,264 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Citigroup Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Elastic by 89.0% in the third quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 89,357 shares of the company’s stock valued at $7,550,000 after purchasing an additional 42,087 shares in the last quarter. 97.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Elastic Company Profile

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.