Scalper1 News
After Citrix Systems ( CTXS ) beat Wall Street’s Q1 forecast — and raised its full-year outlook — investors sent Citrix stock flying as much 12% higher Thursday to 90, a 16-year high. RBC Capital and Needham analysts hiked their price targets, though neither upgraded their ratings. Citrix stock eased but was still up nearly 5%, near 84, in early afternoon trading in the stock market today . After Wednesday’s close, the enterprise software developer, specializing in desktop virtualization, said Q1 adjusted earnings rose 81% to $1.18 per share, where analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected 92 cents. Revenue rose 8.5% to $826 million, well beyond analysts’ $789 million consensus. With its 93 IBD Composite Rating, Citrix is the highest-ranked issue in IBD’s Computer Software-Specialty Enterprise industry group. Shares of the largest company in the group by market value, VMware ( VMW ), were down a fraction. Thursday morning, Citrix and CA ( CA ) traded places, with Citrix now No. 2, with a $12.9 billion market cap, vs. CA’s $12.8 billion. CA stock was up more than 1% Thursday afternoon. Analysts Thursday were impressed with gains so early in Citrix’ reorganization process that included laying off 1,000 employees and contractors in December and January. But they’re waiting for Citrix to fully execute, most significantly waiting for Citrix to spin off its GoToMeeting line into a freestanding, publicly traded company before year-end. “The ongoing restructuring at CTXS … (including) headcount reductions and product card rationalization, many expected these disruptions to impact top-line growth,” said Needham analyst Scott Zeller in a Thursday research note. He hiked his price target on Citrix stock to 96 from 90. RBC analyst Matthew Hedberg raised his price target from 80 to 90. He said that Q1 license revenue grew the most in 11 quarters, and total revenue growth was the best in eight. “Another solid quarter, as outperformance has been marked over the last three quarters thanks to the operational initiatives introduced last year and the focus on the core strategy of the secure delivery of apps and data,” he said in a Thursday research note. Citrix said it may file a Form 10 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the GoTo spinoff before the end of Q2. Scalper1 News
Scalper1 News