Shares of Snowflake have plummeted 59.2% this year as the upside threatens popular growth stocks, but Raymond James is “looking through”. Analyst Simon Leopold has started covering Snowflake with better ratings, saying in a note to clients on Thursday that the company is a “bullish stock” and a “pure game” in The cloud market is growing. “We think Snowflake’s quality/market position will help it outperform because of its sustained growth and significantly increased margins,” wrote Leopold. “Given the lack of clear catalysts and the unfavorable market for ‘growth’ stocks, we limit a strong buy rating.” Raymond James also has a $184 price target on the stock, up 33.1% from Thursday’s closing price. The company believes Snowflake can grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 50% over the next three years, adding that growing demand for enterprise software in the post-pandemic world will continue to benefit beneficial to the company. Raymond James also liked Snowflake’s appeal to businesses large and small and the ease of data sharing that it offered. “Snowflake lacks public cloud scale, but makes up for this with location agnostic that enables data sharing, a key differentiator,” Leopold wrote. “The company doesn’t need to invest billions of dollars; instead, Snowflake runs on the existing public cloud platforms of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.” Investors have shunned growth-focused tech stocks and turned to safe-haven areas like recession fears. It comes as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in an attempt to curb rising inflation. – Michael Bloom of CNBC contributed reporting