The company posted better-than-expected first-quarter earnings, to boot
The shares of Cloudera Inc (NYSE: CLDR) are surging this morning, up 24.2% at $15.96 at last check, after the cloud name reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings, as well as revenue that was in line with expectations. Contributing to today's surge is news that the company agreed to be acquired by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and KKR for $5.3 billion, after it bought software as a service (SaaS) companies Datacoral and Cazena.
On the charts, Cloudera stock has been trading mostly sideways since surging to a Feb. 16, three-year high of $19.35. The security has struggled with overhead pressure at the $13 mark since March, though it recently reconquered support at its 200-day moving average. Longer term, the equity already carries a 44% year-over-year lead.
Analysts are still pessimistic towards the security, leaving ample room for upgrades going forward. Of the eight in question, six call CLDR a tepid "hold" or worse, while two said "strong buy." Meanwhile, the 12-month consensus target price of $15.26 is a 4% deficit to current levels.
A short squeeze could fuel even more tailwinds for Cloudera stock. Short interest rose 2.8% in the last two reporting periods, and the 18.01 million shares sold short make up 6.6% of the stock's available float, or nearly a week's worth of pent-up buying power.
An unwinding of pessimism in the options pits could keep the wind at the equity's back. This is per CLDR's s Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 1.02, which stands higher than 90% of readings from the past year. In other words, short-term option traders have rarely been more put biased.
That shift may already be happening today. So far, 31,000 calls and 13,000 puts have crossed the tape, 27 times what is typically seen at this point in the day. Most popular is the weekly 6/4 16-strike call, followed by the January 2023 10-strike put.