Cloud Storage.
Cloud storage play Snowflake rallies.
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  • Snowflake jumped 13.5% on Thursday, and continued the rally Friday morning with shares up over 6%.
  • The price has defied the prospect of a selloff as a lockup expiration on Thursday allowed early investors to offload 37.9 million shares.
  • Snowflake’s rally comes after shares of the data storage company fell from December highs of over $350.
  • CEO Frank Slootman noted in an interview with CNBC that the company was set to take advantage of “long-term secular trends.”
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Snowflake shares were up over 6% on Friday morning, a day after a 13% move upward on Thursday. This comes despite a lockup expiration that allowed early investors to sell over 37.9 million shares of the data storage company.

Observers had expected shares to fall following the end of the lockup period. 

“With Snowflake stock up almost 133% from its IPO price, we expect some investors to cash out as lock-ups expire. This could weigh on share price accretion from here,” Deutsche Bank analyst Patrick Colville wrote in a research note on Tuesday.

Instead, shares of Snowflake jumped 13.5% and the rally has persisted on Friday. The news is a relief for investors who have watched the stock price fall from all-time highs of over $350 per share in December.

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The rally comes just days after CEO Frank Slootman made an appearance on CNBC's 'Squawk Alley' to talk up his company's future.

Slootman noted in the interview Snowflake is set to take advantage of "long-term secular trends," including movement away from physical data centers to the cloud and pent-up demand for data analytics.

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He also mentioned that the "notion of a headquarters is pretty much evaporating in front of our eyes," and discussed Pinterest going 'headquarter-less' while writing off their San Francisco lease. Slootman called the move "very profound".     

Snowflake still operates in the red, losing over $1 per share according to their latest quarterly SEC filing, but the company is expected to top $500 million in revenue for the first time in 2021.

Snowflake was trading at $321.67 per share as of 10:15am E.T. on Friday. 

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