What happened
Shares of Snowflake (SNOW -1.61%) rose 30.3% in November, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The data warehousing company's shares posted big gains thanks to a record-setting rally for the broader market last month.
The S&P 500 index climbed 10.75% last month, marking its best November performance on record. Many growth-dependent tech stocks posted especially strong performance across the period, and Snowflake shares gained ground thanks to the bullish trend and investor excitement for top cloud software stocks.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
There doesn't appear to have been much in the way of business-specific news behind Snowflake's big gains last month. The stock seems to have gotten a boost from Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on Nov. 16, which revealed that the company held 6.1 million Snowflake shares as of Sept. 30. Investors already knew that Warren Buffet's company held roughly 6.1 million shares of the cloud data warehousing specialist's stock by the close of its initial public offering (IPO) on Sept. 16, but Berkshire's 13F filing may have generated extra excitement by putting the tech company back in the headlines and confirming that the investment conglomerate held on to its shares.
Now what
Snowflake stock has continued to post big gains in December. The company's share price has climbed roughly 19% in the month so far.
Snowflake stock jumped following the company's third-quarter earnings release on Dec. 2, which paired a sales beat with a wider-than-expected loss. The company posted an adjusted loss of $0.62 per share on sales of $159.6 million, while the average analyst estimate had guided for a per-share loss of $0.26 on revenue of $147.5 million.
Analysts looked past the earnings miss and focused on Snowflake's sales growth and outlook, and the stock has seen a flurry of ratings upgrades and price-target increases following the Q3 release. The company provides an industry-leading solution in a market that looks poised for long-term growth, but investors will have to weigh the business's prospects against a rapidly expanding valuation and their personal risk tolerance.
Snowflake has a market capitalization of roughly $109.5 billion and is valued at 386.5 times this year's expected sales.
