Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) is currently dealing with a data breach issue, although an insider believes that now is the right time to buy SNOW stock.
Yesterday, cybersecurity firm Mandiant released a report on the incident, adding that it had identified 165 organizations that were potentially exposed to the breach:
“Mandiant’s investigation has not found any evidence to suggest that unauthorized access to Snowflake customer accounts stemmed from a breach of Snowflake’s enterprise environment. Instead, every incident Mandiant responded to associated with this campaign was traced back to compromised customer credentials.”
Mandiant began investigating a breach incident in April and concluded that the hacker used stolen credentials acquired through infostealer malware. The firm added that the organization, in this instance, did not have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled.
In response, Snowflake announced that it would require all of its customers to enable MFA and other advanced security controls. It believes that the threat actor was targeting accounts with single-factor authentication.
SNOW Stock: Director Michael Speiser Picks Up $9.89 Million of Shares Amid Data Breach
Director Michael Speiser likely believes that the data breach isn’t material to Snowflake’s long-term success, as evident by his recent insider buy. On June 7, Speiser purchased 76,200 shares at an average per share price of $131.08. In total, the transaction was worth a significant $9.89 million and marked Speiser’s first-ever insider buy of SNOW. Following the purchase, Speiser now owns 2.44 million shares.
At the same time, Speiser’s insider sales of SNOW stock since its initial public offering have greatly outnumbered his buys. Speiser has sold $556.41 million worth of shares while buying $9.89 million, amounting to a net amount of $546.42 million shares sold.
During the past year, Snowflake insiders have purchased a total of $15.49 million of shares while selling $460.51 million. The only other insider besides Speiser to purchase shares is CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, who purchased $5 million of shares on March 25. Ramaswamy took the helm of CEO in late February.
Meanwhile, of the $460.51 million in sales, $269.77 million is attributed to chairman and former CEO Frank Slootman.
On the date of publication, Eddie Pan did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
