What happened
Shares of Snowflake (SNOW 1.61%) surged 14% to a record closing high of $387.70 on Friday, furthering the cloud data specialist's gains since reporting earnings earlier in the week.
So what
Snowflake's first earnings release since its initial public offering (IPO) in September was solid. Its revenue rocketed higher by 119% year over year to $159.6 million. Strong customer gains and rising sales to existing clients helped fuel the data warehousing company's expansion.
Snowflake's shares continued their ascent on Friday. Image source: Getty Images.
Wall Street cheered Snowflake's performance. On Thursday, analysts at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and several other investment firms hiked their price targets for its shares. Goldman analyst Heather Bellini, for one, argued that investors were underestimating the size of Snowflake's market opportunity.
Additionally, popular financial show host Jim Cramer called Snowflake one of the smartest technology companies in the world at understanding its customers. "I don't know how you can not hire them ... You want to have the algorithms that they have," Cramer said.
Now what
Snowflake is rapidly taking share from traditional data warehousing service providers. It's a massive market, one that management pegs at $14 billion -- and more than $80 billion when looking at the entire cloud data industry. Thus, despite its torrid growth, Snowflake has long runways for expansion still ahead.
