Overview
- Scotiabank upgraded Cloudflare to Sector Outperform on Tuesday and raised its price target to $300, a call that sent the stock to an opening price of $259.17 and morning trading near $256.82 on roughly 426,000 shares.
- Analyst Patrick Colville based the upgrade on an observed inflection in AI-related traffic, the growing use of Cloudflare Workers as a runtime for AI applications, and recent enterprise wins that he says validate Cloudflare’s architecture.
- Cloudflare’s May 7 quarter beat estimates with $0.25 EPS and $639.75 million in revenue and the company reaffirmed FY2026 EPS guidance of $1.19–$1.20, providing the earnings backdrop for today’s upgrade.
- Institutional investors hold about 82.68% of Cloudflare’s float while insiders executed pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 sales in June that totaled about $149 million over the last 90 days, a mix that traders say can amplify price moves.
- The broader analyst community remains mixed with a Moderate Buy consensus and an average target near $244.23 across 31 firms, leaving Scotiabank’s $300 target as the most bullish call and making upcoming Q2 revenue prints a key test of the thesis.