Snowflake heads into its June 1 earnings report riding a 36% single-day surge and a wall of analyst upgrades — the question now is whether the Street's revised expectations are still too low, or whether the move has already priced in the good news.
The analyst response to the recent run has been striking in its breadth. Almost every major coverage name raised targets on May 28 alone. UBS lifted to $325 from $210, JP Morgan moved to $285 from $245, and Oppenheimer and Piper Sandler both pushed to $295. Even the more cautious voices joined in: Bernstein raised to $250 from $195 while holding Market Perform, and Macquarie moved to $200 from $177 on a Neutral. The consensus sits at Buy with 35 firms positive against just five on Hold, and the mean target of $277 now sits below the current price of $239 — a narrowing that reflects how quickly the stock has re-rated. The earnings yield factor score ranks in just the 4th percentile on EPS surprise history, but forward EPS momentum is in the 96th percentile year-on-year — bulls are leaning on growth trajectory, not recent beat frequency.
The bull case centres on Snowflake's cloud-native data platform and its emerging role as enterprise AI infrastructure. The bear case is more pointed: recent sales departures raise questions about customer expansion, competition from larger cloud providers has intensified, and free cash flow continues to lag revenue growth despite improving operating margins. At a P/E above 85x and EV/EBITDA near 55x — both up sharply over the past month — the valuation leaves little room for a miss on either revenue growth or forward guidance tone.
Short interest has ticked up but tells a structurally relaxed story. Bears lifted positions roughly 15% on the week to 5.8% of free float — a meaningful jump, but still well within a normal range for a high-growth cloud name. Borrowing conditions remain exceptionally loose, with availability running at 2,469% — over 165 million shares available versus roughly 20 million short. Cost to borrow has crept higher on the month, but at 0.54% it remains negligible. The options put/call ratio has eased from last week's 52-week high to 0.78, still running about 1.7 standard deviations above its 20-day average — more cautious than usual, but no longer at the extreme flagged in recent notes. Peer signals are mixed: OKTA and TWLO both fell on Thursday, while MDB is down 12% on the week — suggesting sector-level caution that Snowflake has so far decoupled from.
Monday's print is therefore less a test of whether Snowflake can grow and more a test of whether it can sustain the growth rate and margin profile that now justifies a stock trading near the top end of freshly raised analyst targets — with a 35% one-day move already in the price.
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