Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) Cut to “Hold” at Zacks Research

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) was downgraded by analysts at Zacks Research from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report released on Monday, Zacks reports.

ESTC has been the topic of a number of other reports. DA Davidson raised their price target on shares of Elastic from $60.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 26th. Citigroup boosted their price objective on shares of Elastic from $104.00 to $128.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, August 28th. Monness Crespi & Hardt raised shares of Elastic from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $120.00 price objective for the company in a report on Friday, October 9th. Stifel Nicolaus increased their target price on shares of Elastic from $107.00 to $120.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, October 9th. Finally, Piper Sandler reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of Elastic in a report on Friday, August 28th. Seventeen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and thirteen have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Elastic has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $98.56.

Elastic Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE ESTC opened at $87.40 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.44, a current ratio of 1.81 and a quick ratio of 1.81. The firm has a market cap of $9.18 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.48, a P/E/G ratio of 7.58 and a beta of 0.97. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $92.45 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $68.05. Elastic has a one year low of $42.05 and a one year high of $108.00.

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, August 27th. The company reported $0.70 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.58 by $0.12. Elastic had a negative return on equity of 0.35% and a net margin of 20.84%. The company had revenue of $478.11 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $469.75 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $0.60 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 15.2% on a year-over-year basis. Elastic has set its FY 2027 guidance at 3.290-3.370 EPS and its Q2 2027 guidance at 0.800-0.820 EPS. On average, equities analysts forecast that Elastic will post 0.65 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity at Elastic

In related news, CAO Jane E. Bone sold 1,542 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $87.78, for a total value of $135,356.76. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer owned 47,697 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,186,842.66. The trade was a 3.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, Director Steven Schuurman sold 2,000,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $94.15, for a total transaction of $188,300,000.00. Following the sale, the director directly owned 2,504,600 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $235,808,090. This represents a 44.40% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Insiders sold a total of 4,585,641 shares of company stock worth $422,851,366 in the last quarter. 12.70% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Elastic

Several hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of ESTC. First Trust Advisors LP lifted its holdings in shares of Elastic by 516.1% during the 1st quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 2,627,636 shares of the company’s stock worth $131,356,000 after acquiring an additional 2,201,140 shares during the period. William Blair Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Elastic during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $212,329,000. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. increased its stake in Elastic by 0.6% in the second quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. now owns 905,241 shares of the company’s stock valued at $51,617,000 after acquiring an additional 5,224 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia increased its stake in Elastic by 78.8% in the first quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia now owns 752,434 shares of the company’s stock valued at $37,614,000 after acquiring an additional 331,625 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Voya Investment Management LLC increased its stake in Elastic by 23.2% in the third quarter. Voya Investment Management LLC now owns 735,330 shares of the company’s stock valued at $67,430,000 after acquiring an additional 138,249 shares during the last quarter. 97.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Elastic Company Profile

Elastic N.V. develops software for search, observability and security. Its products help organizations search and analyze data, monitor applications and infrastructure, and detect and respond to cybersecurity threats. The company’s offerings include the Elastic Stack—built around Elasticsearch and including Kibana, Logstash and Beats—as well as cloud-based services through Elastic Cloud. These tools can be used to work with data from a range of sources and support applications such as enterprise search, log analytics and security monitoring.