Technology

Snowflake’s (SNOW) shares fell nearly 13% in recent Thursday trading after the company reported non-GAAP fiscal Q2 net income of $0.18 per diluted share, down from $0.22 a year earlier. Analysts polled by Capital IQ expected $0.16. Revenue for the quarter ended July 31 was $868.8 million, compared with $674 million a year earlier. Analysts expected $850.7 million. The company’s board approved its stock buyback program by another $2.5 billion, in addition to the $491.9 million remaining under the existing program. The board also extended the expiration date for the program by an extra two years to March 2027.

Snowflake (SNOW) posed strong product revenue growth in fiscal Q2 due to “stable demand and improving large customer consumption,” Oppenheimer said Wednesday in a report. Investor concerns about competition and Snowflake’s ability to execute in artificial intelligence are likely to persist with revenue upside smaller than the previous quarter, Oppenheimer said. Increased compute revenue from Iceberg adoption, growing traction for products such as Cortex and Snowpark, improving execution and closing rates and leadership in serving analytical workloads are expected to contribute to an improved growth outlook in fiscal 2026, the report said. Snowflake faces challenges from declining net revenue retention and margin pressures from graphics processing units and AI investments, while potential headwinds from the availability of Iceberg Tables affect product revenue growth, the report said. Oppenheimer reiterated its outperform rating on Snowflake’s stock and kept the price target at $180. On Wednesday, the company projected fiscal Q3 revenue of

Analyst Kash Rangan reaffirmed a Buy rating and price target of $220. Snowflake reported solid quarterly results, but its guidance fell short of high expectations, Rangan said. The stock came under pressure due to the “lack of beat flow-through” on operating and free cash flow margins and a “growing dispersion between cRPO / RPO and forward revenue growth,” he added. “Snowflake’s true beat-and-raise in a still constrained spending environment underscores the stability of consumption and optimization trends through mid-August,” the analyst wrote. The company’s NNR “displayed the lowest rate of sequential deceleration in the past 2+ years,” he further stated.

Analysts say Snowflake didn’t do enough to articulate its strategy, address competition concerns or reassure on growth outlook Investors and analysts wanted more from Snowflake Inc., beyond the company’s latest earnings beat and outlook hike. While Snowflake’s (SNOW) results came in better than expected Wednesday afternoon, the data-software company didn’t deliver the same magnitude of a sales beat as it has in the past. Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss noted that the company topped expectations by about 2%, whereas a quarter before it had logged a 5% beat. From Weiss’s perspective, “the trajectory of decelerating growth likely fails to address existing bear cases around rising competitive intensity.” He wrote: “Waning optimization headwinds and emerging new product initiatives should support growth, but investors may need more concrete signals to get onboard.” Weiss has an equal-weight rating and $175 target price on the stock. Snowflake shares are down 13.7% in afternoon trading