How to buy Snowflake stocks from Australia

Snowflake (SNOW) is a tech business that provides cloud-data solutions. Snowflake's platform allows customers to merge data into a single source to drive business insights, to easily and securely share data and to build data-driven applications.

The company was founded in 2013 and listed on the NYSE in 2020. Snowflake is currently valued at over $30 billion.

How to buy shares in Snowflake stocks

• Compare share trading platforms. To buy shares in a US company, you'll need to sign up to a platform with US market access. If you're a beginner, look for a platform with low commissions and investment tools to track your portfolio. Narrow down top brands with our comparison table.
• Open and fund your brokerage account. Complete an application with your personal and financial details, like your ID and bank information. Fund your account with a bank transfer, credit card or debit card.
• Search for Snowflake. Find the Snowflake stocks by name or ticker symbol: SNOW. Research its history to confirm it's a solid investment against your financial goals.
• Purchase now or later. Buy today with a market order or use a limit order to delay your purchase until Snowflake stock reaches your desired price. To spread out your purchase, look into dollar-cost averaging, which smooths out buying at consistent intervals and amounts.
• Decide on how many to buy. Weigh your budget against a diversified portfolio that can minimise risk through the market's ups and downs. You may be able to buy a fractional share of Snowflake, depending on your broker.
• Check in on your investment. Congratulations, you own a part of Snowflake. Optimise your portfolio by tracking how your stock — and even the business — performs with an eye on the long term. You may be eligible for dividends and shareholder voting rights on directors and management that can affect your stock.

What we know about Snowflake's balance sheet

Snowflake raised $US450 million in its Series F funding round in 2018 and another $US479 million in its Series G earlier this year. Its most recent valuation sat at a sizeable $US12.5 billion.

So, what does the company's balance sheet look like following the influx of capital?

Snowflake reported $US96.6 million in revenue for fiscal 2019 followed by $US264.7 million in revenue for fiscal 2020. Snowflake is growing, that much is clear. But whether it's profitable is a different story. Snowflake reported net losses of $178 million in 2019 and $348.5 million in 2020.

But here's the good news: Snowflake's losses are falling. In Q2 2019, the company reported a net loss of $US177.2 million, while in Q2 2020, net losses sat at $US171.2 million. And the company reported 121% year-over-year growth for Q2 — a promising figure for interested investors.

Snowflake investment risks

Snowflake competes with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. And complicating this already competitive landscape is the fact that Snowflake actually relies on its competitors for storage and computing power.

CNBC reports that 85% of Snowflake's workloads are housed on Amazon Web Services, with the other 15% split between Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. It's not easy to undercut and outperform a competitor when you rely on them to keep you in business.

The bottom line is that Snowflake isn't the only company trying to capitalise on the shift from traditional data storage to the cloud. There are some big-name players on the field and competition in the tech sector is notoriously fierce.

Snowflake compared

Snowflake is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses securely house and analyse their data. It was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. It has over 3,000 customers — 56 of which are accounts worth over $1 million, including Cisco and Capital One. The platform facilitates over 500 million queries daily.

Snowflake is not an accredited business with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) from which it receives an F rating for failing to respond to a complaint.

How are similar stocks performing?

Snowflake is frequently compared to Apple, Amazon and Google, but these companies do much more than cloud-based data storage. Companies that exclusively focus on the type of service Snowflake offers include Cloudera, Teradata and MongoDB, but these companies haven't been performing as well. Examining these competitor stocks can help you gauge how the market is doing but aren't a direct indicator of how Snowflake will perform.