Cowen analyst J. Derrick Wood initiated coverage of Snowflake (SNOW) with an Outperform rating and $295 price target. The company's story is in "rare air," with it poised to reach $1 billion in revenue more quickly than any other software name, Wood told investors in a research note. The analyst believes Snowflake has "game-changing technology," solving "decades-old problems" that will disrupt the database market.

DA Davidson analyst Andrew Nowinski also started coverage of Snowflake with a Buy rating and $300 price target. The analyst is positive on the company's "differentiated platform," which he contends is easier to use, provides better performance, and offers a unique Data Sharing feature that is unmatched by the competition.

Nowinski further stated that the company's "unique" consumption-based pricing model makes it easier for customers to move onto the Snowflake platform, and its "sustainable" revenue growth rate is "unmatched" in the industry.

Voicing a similar opinion, Truist analyst Joel Fishbein initiated Snowflake with a Buy rating and $350 price target. The analyst argued that the company possesses a "unique technology advantage," which should lead to a "dominant competitive position in the data cloud" in both the short- and long-term. Fishbein added that he believes Snowflake is addressing an acute problem and "redefining" the monetization of data, as "legacy providers are unable to deal with complex IT environments."

Snowflake is in the "sweet spot for two of the most important secular trends of this decade," namely data-driven decision making and cloud adoption, Deutsche Bank analyst Patrick Colville told investors in his own initiation note. The analyst argued that the company's competitive positioning is being underappreciated at current share levels, and initiated the stock with a Buy rating and a $305 price target.

Mizuho, Oppenheimer, JMP Securities, and Piper Sandler also started coverage of Snowflake with Buy-equivalent ratings.

MOMENTUM REFLECTED IN VALUATION

More cautious on the stock, Loop Capital analyst Yun Kim initiated coverage of Snowflake with a Hold rating and $250 price target. The analyst acknowledged that the company is emerging as the "leader in a cloud data lake and cloud data platform markets," offering one of the best ways to play the current cloud migration secular trend.

Furthermore, given the "highly economical" storage architecture and "highly elastic" computing resources, he anticipates a plethora of new use cases to emerge as data migration to the cloud continues. However, with the stock trading at 61-times expected 2021 sales - relative to peer group multiple of 25-times - the analyst believes much of Snowflake's sales momentum is reflected in its valuation.

JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy also started coverage of Snowflake with a Neutral rating and $247 price target. While the analyst believes the company could grow into and beyond the current valuation in future years, he thinks it is difficult to see material outperformance through 2021.

Canaccord, Stifel, Credit Suisse, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, and BTIG also initiated coverage of the stock with Neutral-equivalent ratings on valuation concerns. In morning trading as of the time of writing, shares of Snowflake have gained about 4% to $246.50.