Analyst Ratings February 23, 2026

TD Cowen Cuts Elastic Price Target to $70 Amid Competitive Pressures

Analyst keeps Hold rating while highlighting mixed industry checks and Elastic’s push into AI and cloud performance improvements

By Ajmal Hussain ESTC
TD Cowen Cuts Elastic Price Target to $70 Amid Competitive Pressures
ESTC

TD Cowen trimmed its 12-month price objective for Elastic NV to $70 from $85 and held a Hold rating, citing mixed industry checks and competitive pressure from larger observability vendors and OpenSearch. The firm expects Elastic to beat its 13% constant-currency guidance and to raise its full-year outlook when it reports on February 26, 2026. Elastic has continued to advance AI and cloud capabilities, including Agent Builder and serverless performance upgrades on AWS.

Key Points

  • TD Cowen lowerd Elastic price target to $70 from $85 while maintaining a Hold rating; expects a beat vs. 13% constant-currency guidance and a raise to full-year outlook - impacts enterprise software and cloud sectors.
  • Analysts forecast fiscal 2026 earnings of $2.53 per share, a reversal from a current loss of $1.04 per share; market reaction has pushed the stock near its 52-week low and down 27% over six months - impacts equity markets and SaaS valuations.
  • Elastic has introduced Agent Builder, upgraded Cloud Serverless performance on AWS using Graviton for higher throughput and lower latency, earned an AWS Agentic AI Specialization, and added an Amazon Bedrock AgentCore integration - impacts AI, cloud infrastructure, and observability markets.

TD Cowen has reduced its price target for Elastic NV to $70 from $85 while maintaining a Hold recommendation on the shares. The analyst house said it expects Elastic to report quarterly results on February 26, 2026, and anticipates a beat versus guidance of 13% constant-currency growth, followed by an upward revision to full-year guidance.

The firm described its industry checks as mixed, pointing specifically to competitive pressure coming from both larger observability vendors and from OpenSearch. Those checks underpin TD Cowen's view of the company's near-term setup as balanced - a combination of modest valuation support and ongoing execution questions.

Analysts currently project earnings of $2.53 per share for fiscal 2026, a substantial swing from the present loss of $1.04 per share. TD Cowen reiterated that while the stock has traded roughly in line with the IGV exchange-traded index year-to-date, the shares carry a low valuation relative to recent performance metrics. At the time of the note the stock was trading at $55.25, near a 52-week low of $56.70, and had fallen about 27% over the prior six months.

TD Cowen summarized its stance: it expects a beat and a raise, sees a balanced setup, and emphasized that its checks remain mixed largely due to competitive concerns from larger observability vendors and OpenSearch. The firm added that expectations for Elastic appear somewhat elevated and that Cloud consistency has been low.

Alongside the analyst update, the company has continued to roll out product and cloud-focused initiatives aimed at AI and operational efficiency. Elastic announced Agent Builder, a developer-focused toolset meant to help teams create AI agents that leverage enterprise data for context-driven tasks. Agent Builder is positioned as a single environment for data preparation, retrieval, and analysis to streamline the development of custom AI agents.

Elastic also reported performance upgrades to its Cloud Serverless service on Amazon Web Services. The firm said those improvements, achieved through AWS Graviton instances, delivered up to 50% higher indexing throughput and 37% lower search latency at no additional cost. Elastic framed the upgrades as enhancements for search, observability, and security workloads operating in its cloud environment.

In recognition of its AI capabilities, Elastic earned the AWS Agentic AI Specialization, signaling the company’s ability to deploy self-operating AI systems that can reason, plan, and execute tasks autonomously. Elastic additionally introduced an integration for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to provide monitoring and troubleshooting for AI agents via the Elasticsearch platform. That integration is intended to give site reliability engineers and developers tools to observe agent performance and manage associated costs.

Separately, Rosenblatt Securities cut its price target on Elastic to $110 from $130 but retained a Buy rating, citing multiple compression and macroeconomic pressures affecting enterprise software companies as factors for the reduction.

TD Cowen’s note frames a cross-current view: product and cloud improvements tied to AI and performance sit alongside tangible competitive risks and uneven cloud consistency. The firm’s Hold stance and lower price target reflect a view that while upside remains possible through product momentum and improved cloud performance, the competitive landscape and current market expectations temper conviction.


Summary
TD Cowen cut Elastic’s price target to $70 from $85 and kept a Hold rating. The firm expects Elastic to beat its 13% constant-currency guidance and raise its full-year outlook when it reports on February 26, 2026. Industry checks were described as mixed due to competition from larger observability vendors and OpenSearch. Elastic continues to advance AI and cloud capabilities, including Agent Builder, serverless performance gains on AWS using Graviton instances, an AWS Agentic AI Specialization, and an Amazon Bedrock AgentCore integration.

Risks

  • Competitive pressure from larger observability vendors and OpenSearch could weigh on Elastic’s growth and market share - relevant to the observability and enterprise search sectors.
  • Expectations for Elastic may be somewhat high while Cloud consistency has been characterized as low, creating execution risk versus investor forecasts - relevant to cloud services and SaaS revenue consistency.
  • Macro-driven multiple compression and broader enterprise software headwinds cited by Rosenblatt could limit upside even if product improvements continue - relevant to enterprise software valuations and market sentiment.

More from Analyst Ratings

William Blair Sticks With Outperform on JFrog as Analysts Weigh Security Positioning Feb 23, 2026 UBS Sticks with Buy on Victoria's Secret, Cites Ongoing Q4 Momentum and Upside Guidance Potential Feb 23, 2026 TD Cowen Keeps Xylem on Hold, Reaffirms $135 Target as Execution Risk Rises Feb 23, 2026 Stifel Raises Quanta Services Price Target to $647 After Strong Q4 Results Feb 23, 2026 UBS Sticks With Buy on Target Ahead of Q4 Results, Sees Clear Path to Improvement Feb 23, 2026