William Blair Investment Management LLC Lowers Position in Confluent, Inc. $CFLT

William Blair Investment Management LLC lessened its stake in Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFLT) by 11.1% in the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 8,569,807 shares of the company’s stock after selling 1,069,295 shares during the quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC owned 2.45% of Confluent worth $169,682,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Quantbot Technologies LP bought a new position in shares of Confluent during the third quarter valued at $1,122,000. Andra AP fonden lifted its stake in Confluent by 55.2% during the 3rd quarter. Andra AP fonden now owns 290,917 shares of the company’s stock valued at $5,760,000 after acquiring an additional 103,529 shares during the period. Xponance Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Confluent by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter. Xponance Inc. now owns 40,399 shares of the company’s stock valued at $800,000 after acquiring an additional 723 shares during the last quarter. TD Asset Management Inc bought a new stake in shares of Confluent in the third quarter worth approximately $1,164,000. Finally, Krane Funds Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Confluent by 301.7% in the third quarter. Krane Funds Advisors LLC now owns 52,070 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,031,000 after acquiring an additional 39,109 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 78.09% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity

In other Confluent news, CEO Edward Jay Kreps sold 270,207 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, February 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $30.70, for a total transaction of $8,295,354.90. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 301,660 shares in the company, valued at approximately $9,260,962. The trade was a 47.25% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director Eric Vishria sold 61,905 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, February 13th. The shares were sold at an average price of $30.57, for a total value of $1,892,435.85. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 663,637 shares in the company, valued at $20,287,383.09. This represents a 8.53% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 1,539,830 shares of company stock valued at $46,231,391. 9.20% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Confluent Price Performance

Shares of CFLT stock opened at $30.67 on Friday. Confluent, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $15.64 and a fifty-two week high of $32.63. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.94, a quick ratio of 3.83 and a current ratio of 3.83. The firm has a market capitalization of $10.97 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -35.66 and a beta of 0.95. The stock’s 50-day simple moving average is $30.43 and its 200-day simple moving average is $24.97.

Confluent (NASDAQ:CFLT) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, February 11th. The company reported $0.12 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.10 by $0.02. Confluent had a negative net margin of 25.31% and a negative return on equity of 22.66%. The company had revenue of $314.82 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $308.03 million. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.09 EPS. Confluent’s revenue for the quarter was up 20.5% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Confluent, Inc. will post -0.83 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages recently issued reports on CFLT. Oppenheimer cut shares of Confluent from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, December 9th. DA Davidson reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and issued a $31.00 price objective (up from $29.00) on shares of Confluent in a report on Monday, December 8th. Wells Fargo & Company reissued an “equal weight” rating and issued a $31.00 target price on shares of Confluent in a report on Monday, December 8th. Citigroup boosted their price target on Confluent from $26.00 to $31.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 9th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada cut shares of Confluent from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and increased their price objective for the stock from $30.00 to $31.00 in a research note on Tuesday, December 9th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, three have given a Buy rating, twenty-eight have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Confluent has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $28.71.

Confluent Profile

Confluent, Inc (NASDAQ: CFLT) is a leading provider of an event streaming platform built on Apache Kafka. The company’s flagship offerings include Confluent Platform—a self-managed software solution—and Confluent Cloud, a fully managed service designed to simplify real-time data processing across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. These products enable enterprises to collect, process and distribute high volumes of data in real time, supporting use cases such as fraud detection, supply chain optimization and personalized customer experiences.

Founded in 2014 by Apache Kafka co-creators Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao, Confluent has driven the commercialization of Kafka technologies and extended the platform with tools for data integration, stream processing and enterprise-grade security.