New York, Feb 13, 2026, 18:47 (EST) — After-hours
- Cloudflare shares closed up about 5.8% on Friday and were little changed after the bell
- Analysts raised several price targets this week after the company’s outlook and backlog metrics
- Investors now look to a shortened U.S. trading week and the company’s next conference appearance
Cloudflare, Inc. shares climbed 5.8% to $195.85 on Friday, giving the internet security and web-infrastructure firm another leg up after a choppy stretch for high-growth software names. The stock traded between $184.45 and $198.87 in regular hours and held near the close in after-hours dealing. (Investing)
The outperformance landed as the Nasdaq finished the day lower and traders dialed back risk ahead of Monday’s U.S. Presidents Day market holiday. “Large cap tech stocks continue to be an anchor on the market and any whiff of optimism continues to get rejected,” Michael James, managing director at Rosenblatt Securities, said. (Reuters)
For Cloudflare, the near-term debate is about durability — whether AI-driven traffic and “agentic” software translate into paid usage fast enough to support premium valuations, while the broader market frets about disruption and big spending across tech.
On the Street, Citigroup analyst Fatima Boolani kept a Buy rating on Cloudflare on Thursday and nudged her price target to $265 from $260, one of several post-results revisions. Other firms have moved targets both ways in recent sessions, underscoring how split investors remain on what “better” growth should be worth at this point in the cycle. (GuruFocus)
Baird analyst Shrenik Kothari upgraded Cloudflare to Outperform and set a $260 target, saying the company’s quarter “marked the strongest confirmation yet” that growth drivers are “compounding simultaneously.” Baird pointed to faster remaining performance obligations — a measure of contracted revenue yet to be recognized — alongside record annual contract value, and said it expects “a step-function increase” in traffic tied to agentic AI. (TipRanks)
Cloudflare’s net retention rate hit 120%, Baird said, a sign existing customers are expanding spend even as budgets stay tight in parts of enterprise tech. The firm also flagged improving sales productivity and called the company’s 2026 growth outlook “prudent.” (Investing)
The company reported fourth-quarter results earlier this week, including adjusted earnings of $0.28 per share and revenue of $614.5 million, up 34% from a year earlier, according to its release and analysts’ notes. William Blair analyst Jonathan Ho said the company “delivered another very strong quarter,” pointing to the 2026 guidance as a reset for investor expectations after a messy stretch for software stocks. (Investors)
Cloudflare sells tools that speed up and secure internet traffic, and it has been pushing its Workers platform — a developer service that lets customers run code closer to users — as it talks up AI-related workloads.
The move also comes with investors scanning the broader edge-network space. Fastly shares rose on Friday after its own quarterly sales beat and forecast, another reminder that traders are still willing to pay up for “picks-and-shovels” internet infrastructure when the numbers cooperate. (Nasdaq)
Filings added a bit of texture late in the week. A Schedule 13G/A filing showed Capital World Investors reported beneficial ownership of about 36.4 million Cloudflare shares, or roughly 11.5% of the class, while another 13G/A detailed CEO Matthew Prince’s beneficial ownership at about 26.3 million shares, or 7.7% of Class A on the filing’s calculation. (Stock Titan)
Still, the risk is straightforward: if the surge in AI-related traffic does not translate into sustained billings, or if enterprise buyers slow contract expansion, Cloudflare’s rally can unwind quickly. The stock’s wide intraday swings this week underline how quickly sentiment is flipping across high-multiple software.
Next up, investors will watch whether the stock can hold gains into Tuesday’s reopen after the U.S. holiday and for any further broker revisions. Cloudflare is scheduled to appear at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on March 3, according to the company’s investor site. (Cloudflare)
