Morgan Stanley Issues Pessimistic Forecast for C3.ai (NYSE:AI) Stock Price

C3.ai (NYSE:AI) had its price objective lowered by Morgan Stanley from $32.00 to $30.00 in a note issued to investors on Thursday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has an “underweight” rating on the stock. Morgan Stanley’s price objective suggests a potential upside of 27.96% from the stock’s current price.

A number of other analysts have also recently weighed in on the stock. Northland Securities increased their price target on shares of C3.ai from $35.00 to $45.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 10th. KeyCorp downgraded shares of C3.ai from a “sector weight” rating to an “underweight” rating and set a $29.00 target price for the company. in a research note on Thursday, December 19th. DA Davidson upgraded C3.ai to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 18th. JMP Securities increased their price objective on C3.ai from $40.00 to $55.00 and gave the stock a “market outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 10th. Finally, Piper Sandler lowered their target price on C3.ai from $42.00 to $28.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, C3.ai currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $31.33.

C3.ai Stock Performance

C3.ai stock opened at $23.44 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $3.03 billion, a P/E ratio of -10.61 and a beta of 1.98. C3.ai has a fifty-two week low of $18.85 and a fifty-two week high of $45.08. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $32.39 and a 200-day simple moving average of $29.54.

C3.ai (NYSE:AI) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, February 26th. The company reported ($0.62) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.25) by ($0.37). The firm had revenue of $98.78 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $98.12 million. C3.ai had a negative net margin of 79.17% and a negative return on equity of 31.31%. As a group, analysts forecast that C3.ai will post -2.44 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other C3.ai news, VP Merel Witteveen sold 11,132 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $34.95, for a total transaction of $389,063.40. Following the transaction, the vice president now directly owns 4,142 shares in the company, valued at approximately $144,762.90. This represents a 72.88 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CFO Hitesh Lath sold 11,339 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $42.00, for a total transaction of $476,238.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 851 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $35,742. This trade represents a 93.02 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 1,643,311 shares of company stock worth $59,736,620. 33.54% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of C3.ai

Large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of C3.ai by 3.6% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 12,935,969 shares of the company’s stock worth $445,385,000 after buying an additional 446,529 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in C3.ai by 14.1% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 2,529,991 shares of the company’s stock valued at $87,128,000 after acquiring an additional 313,066 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp increased its holdings in C3.ai by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,121,391 shares of the company’s stock valued at $51,401,000 after acquiring an additional 38,185 shares in the last quarter. Two Sigma Investments LP acquired a new position in C3.ai during the fourth quarter worth about $42,306,000. Finally, Man Group plc purchased a new stake in shares of C3.ai in the fourth quarter valued at about $38,455,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 38.96% of the company’s stock.

About C3.ai

C3.ai, Inc operates as an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software company in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The company provides C3 AI platform, an application development and runtime environment that enables customers to design, develop, and deploy enterprise AI applications; C3 AI Ex Machina for analysis-ready data; C3 AI CRM, an industry specific customer relationship management solution; and C3 Generative AI Product Suite that enables to locate, retrieve, and present information.