Tag Archives: googl

Adobe Systems Transition Earns Price-Target Hike From FBR

With its stock trading within shouting distance of its all-time high, Adobe Systems ( ADBE ) earned a price-target hike on Tuesday from investment bank FBR Capital Markets. Adobe stock was up a fraction to above 93 in midday trading on the stock market today . The provider of cloud-based media and marketing software hit a record high of 98 on March 18. It sports a good IBD Relative Strength Rating of 85, putting it among the top 15% of all stocks in performance the past 12 months. FBR analyst Samad Samana raised his price target on Adobe stock to 115 from 110 and reiterated his market perform rating. He predicts Adobe will see 20%-plus revenue growth and 30%-plus EPS growth for the next two years. Adobe has shifted its business from perpetual license software to software-as-a-service delivered over the Internet. “We believe the transition to a subscription model has yielded a more attractive business model,” Samana said. “We expect this to be reflected in fiscal 2016 and beyond.” Adobe has three cloud computing businesses: Creative Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Document Cloud. The biggest is Creative Cloud, which includes software for creative professionals such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Marketing Cloud provides online marketing and advertising services. Document Cloud leverages Adobe’s popular online document-sharing product Acrobat and its ubiquitous PDF format. The company’s Creative Cloud business earns most of the attention, but its Marketing Cloud is maturing at the right time, Samana said. “Digital marketing is at or near the top of the priority list for enterprises, and Adobe appears well positioned to help companies transform their businesses to be more engaging with end customers,” he said in a research report. Adobe should be able to continue posting healthy growth in the digital marketing business despite competition from Alphabet ( GOOGL ), Oracle ( ORCL ), Salesforce.com ( CRM ) and others, he said. RELATED: Adobe Driving Third Wave Of Enterprise Software Disruption

Facebook Stock Breaches 50-Day Support Amid Usage Fears, F8 Show

Loading the player… Facebook ( FB ) fell in quick turnover for a second session in a row amid concerns that users are not sharing as many personal posts. The Information reported last week that Facebook saw a 21% drop in original posts from mid-2014 to mid-2015, and that it is working to correct that decline. Meanwhile, privately held social media competitor Snapchat is all about personal shares. Facebook-owned Instagram is also a hub for personal posts. The social media giant has indicated that it’s just the type of sharing that has changed on its main platform, not the level of sharing. Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference begins tomorrow, where chatbots are expected to be a hot topic. That could open a new revenue stream for businesses looking to interact with their customers on a social platform. But tech giants still have a lot to learn when it comes to chatbots. Microsoft ’s ( MSFT ) experiment with teen chatbot Tay quickly went south. Facebook shares dropped 1.5%, breaching support at the 50-day line. A drop below the 50-day moving average in heavy volume is an especially bearish sign, but this move was in slightly above average trade. Shares are trading 7% below a cup-with-handle base buy point of 117.09. Microsoft is trading 4% below its late-December high and a consolidation buy point at 56.95, which is 10 cents above the high. The stock fell 0.2% Monday. Facebook last week rolled out its Live platform globally, with expanded features — edging into Twitter ’s ( TWTR ) realm, which includes its Periscope live streaming platform. Twitter is still searching for positive catalysts to revive its shares. Last week, it signed a pact with the NFL to live stream 10 Thursday Night Football games. Twitter is in an extended downtrend, trading 68% below its 52-week high. The stock dipped 0.8% Monday. Among other widely held tech stocks, Google owner Alphabet ( GOOGL ) is working on a cup-with-handle base with a 777.41 buy point. It’s trading 3% below that level, falling 0.3% Monday. And Apple ( AAPL ) tried to retake the 110 price level, but pared its gains to close up 0.3%. Apple is nearing its downward sloping 200-day line, but its recent attempts to retake that level have failed. Apple stock is 18% below its late-April peak. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Alphabet Upgraded As Forex Headwinds Calm, Ads Strong

Alphabet ( GOOGL ), the parent of search leader Google, got a ratings upgrade and price target boost on Monday from Pivotal Research, which said it expects foreign-exchange headwinds to calm. Pivotal upgraded Alphabet stock to buy from hold, as well as hiking its price target to 970 from 800. Alphabet stock was up a fraction in afternoon trading in the stock market today , near 765. Alphabet reports Q1 earnings on April 21. Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser wrote in a research report Monday that he estimates Alphabet will log 16% revenue growth year over year in Q1, or 18% revenue growth excluding traffic acquisition costs — the fees Google pays to other companies to carry its ads. Alphabet’s dominant position in digital advertising alongside Facebook ( FB ) “is fundamentally unchanged, and we continue to expect Google to sustain double-digit growth rates in advertising on an ongoing basis,” wrote Wieser. The same factors that led to Alphabet’s growth in Q4 will continue, he said, including revenue from Google video wing YouTube and programmatic display-related ads. Wieser said he is watching display ad revenue because that growing share of Alphabet’s overall revenue mix is generally less profitable than search ads, “largely because of the needs to continually innovate on related products and provide service and marketing support to those products.” Programmatic advertising, for example, “does not eliminate the need for costly humans in the process of trading media, but instead requires different humans to manage these businesses,” he wrote. “This issue is exacerbated with YouTube, where content delivery and capital costs are even higher, and content costs are now a factor that both drives growth, but also constrains profitability.” Alphabet’s non-core, or “Other Bets,” are “likely to continue dragging on Alphabet overall , although at least their scale is relatively minimal overall,” said Wieser. For example, Nest, the smart home device maker Google bought for $3.2 billion in 2014 to compete with Apple ( AAPL ) in that growing market, is falling short of expectations, news site Re/Code reported last month. ITG Investment Research analyst Steve Weinstein, said in an industry note Monday he expects to see Alphabet post revenue of roughly $2 billion for “Google other” and $150 million for “Other Bets” for Q1, with total gross revenue coming in at roughly $20.57 billion, slightly ahead of consensus of $20.3 billion.