Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) Raised to “Overweight” at Morgan Stanley

Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) was upgraded by equities research analysts at Morgan Stanley from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating in a research note issued on Monday,Briefing.com Automated Import reports. The brokerage presently has a $160.00 target price on the technology company’s stock, up from their previous target price of $144.00. Morgan Stanley’s price objective indicates a potential upside of 40.16% from the stock’s previous close.

A number of other research firms have also commented on TWLO. Oppenheimer upped their price objective on shares of Twilio from $90.00 to $160.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, January 24th. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price objective on shares of Twilio from $140.00 to $155.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, January 24th. JMP Securities reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating and issued a $165.00 price objective on shares of Twilio in a research note on Friday, February 14th. Mizuho upped their price objective on shares of Twilio from $140.00 to $150.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, January 24th. Finally, Baird R W upgraded shares of Twilio from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, January 24th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have issued a hold rating, seventeen have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $132.74.

Twilio Trading Down 3.3 %

TWLO opened at $114.16 on Monday. Twilio has a fifty-two week low of $52.51 and a fifty-two week high of $151.95. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.12, a current ratio of 5.06 and a quick ratio of 5.06. The firm has a market capitalization of $17.51 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -178.37, a PEG ratio of 4.30 and a beta of 1.42. The company’s 50 day moving average price is $122.09 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $92.81.

Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, February 13th. The technology company reported $0.22 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.99 by ($0.77). Twilio had a positive return on equity of 1.38% and a negative net margin of 2.45%. The business had revenue of $1.19 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.19 billion. As a group, research analysts predict that Twilio will post 1.44 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CFO Aidan Viggiano sold 1,391 shares of Twilio stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $124.51, for a total value of $173,193.41. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 152,519 shares in the company, valued at $18,990,140.69. This trade represents a 0.90 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CEO Khozema Shipchandler sold 10,834 shares of Twilio stock in a transaction dated Monday, January 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $113.58, for a total transaction of $1,230,525.72. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 244,971 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $27,823,806.18. The trade was a 4.24 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 23,406 shares of company stock worth $2,656,889. Insiders own 4.50% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Twilio

A number of large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. FMR LLC boosted its position in shares of Twilio by 0.8% in the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 9,206,488 shares of the technology company’s stock valued at $600,447,000 after acquiring an additional 77,436 shares during the period. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership lifted its holdings in shares of Twilio by 718.7% in the 4th quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 3,262,765 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $352,640,000 after acquiring an additional 2,864,235 shares during the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Twilio by 18.3% in the 3rd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 2,867,623 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $187,026,000 after acquiring an additional 444,295 shares during the last quarter. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. purchased a new position in shares of Twilio in the fourth quarter worth $301,258,000. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Twilio by 1.3% in the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 2,724,406 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $177,622,000 after buying an additional 33,824 shares during the period. 84.27% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

About Twilio

Twilio Inc, together with its subsidiaries, provides customer engagement platform solutions in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments, Twilio Communications and Twilio Segment. The company provides various application programming interfaces and software solutions for communications between customers and end users, including messaging, voice, email, flex, marketing campaigns, and user identity and authentication.