Tag Archives: orcl

Workday Financial Software Heading For ‘Success’; Stock Gains Again

Building momentum from a week of positive trade, cloud software developer Workday ’s ( WDAY ) stock gained another 1% Friday morning — nearly 8% for the week — after FBR Capital Markets satisfied itself that Workday’s financial software may “achieve the same level of success as (or greater than) its HCM (human capital management) product suite.” In a research note issued Friday, FBR analyst Samad Samana said that he visited Workday’s Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters in Silicon Valley this week and cornered Betsy Bland, vice president of financial management products, and Robynne Sisco, chief accounting officer, who let him “dig deeper into what we have found to be the single most important issue on investors’ minds.” The issue: Will Workday’s financial software do great? “We walked away more confident that the financials business is positioned to have a strong (fiscal 2017) as the product suite has improved significantly, more WDAY reps are now selling financials, a critical mass of live customers is providing positive references for potential customers, and the willingness to adopt cloud-based financials has increased,” Samana said. Investors responded by pushing Workday stock up 2% to 78.34 before easing back to a 1.6% gain above 78 by midday in the  stock market today . On Wednesday, Workday stock broke out of a 12-week, first-stage cup-with-handle base with a 75.60 buy point. Workday competes against no shortage of rivals, including SAP ( SAP ), Salesforce.com ( CRM ) and legacy software developer Oracle ( ORCL ). Salesforce stock was up 1.6% to 74.98 at midday Friday, and Oracle was up fractionally at 40.96. But SAP stock was down 0.8% to 79.74. Samana said he learned that Workday had added more than 45 financial software customers in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, “the most ever in a single quarter.” At 207 financial customers, it’s more than double the base of a year before. For Q4, Workday earnings beat Wall Street views, but its Q1 revenue outlook missed estimates. For fiscal Q1, ending in April, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Workday to lose an adjusted two cents per share minus items, flat with a year earlier, on revenue up 35% to $339 million. Workday went public in October 2012, priced at 28.

Oracle Seeks $9.3 Bil From Google Over Java Use; Trial Nears

Oracle ( ORCL ) stock slipped nearly 1% and Alphabet ( GOOGL ) stalled flat following a report that Oracle will seek as much as $9.3 billion in damages from Google Android’s use of Oracle’s iconic Java software. Oracle sued six years ago, before Google restructured into Alphabet, and is preparing for a second trial to start May 9 , according to an IDG News Service report. When it first went to trial in 2012, Android was said to be the world’s largest mobile operating system, with more than 300 million users. Today, it has more than 1.4 billion active accounts. In the first trial, the jury found that Google had used Oracle’s Java code for mobile Android but struggled over Google’s claim to limited “fair use” of Oracle’s code. “The core issue is whether the APIs (application programming interfaces) here are copyrightable, and that’s for the court to decide,” Jim Prosser, Google’s global communications manager at the time, told IBD in May 2012. “We expect to prevail on this issue and Oracle’s other claims.” Later that month, the jury ruled in favor of Google over the “fair use” question. An appellate court overruled the decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s last appeal, essentially sending the case back to the trial court. Oracle presented the new damage total in court filings, according to IDG reports Monday, which also said that Google may have put a $100 million cap on some damages, according to an Oracle filing. Oracle fell 0.9% to 40.62 in the stock market today , 10% off a five-month June 16 high of 45.24 and 3% off a March 21 peak at 42. Google parent Alphabet closed down 0.2% to 753.28 Monday, just 7% off its Feb. 2 all-time record high of 810.35. Oracle and Google spokespeople could not immediately be reached for comment.

Zendesk Attracting Larger Customers For Its Business Software

When you’re “a small player in a large market that is still new, fragmented and growing,” a key to success is “staying one step ahead of the competition,” and that’s what workplace software developer Zendesk ( ZEN ) is doing, said Summit Research analyst Jonathan Kees. Following the upbeat commentary in Kees’ research note, issued Sunday, Zendesk stock was up a fraction in early afternoon trading in the stock market today , but it’s still more than 25% below a 17-month high at 27.52, touched Dec. 4. Like other players in the infamous Software Sag of 2016, Zendesk fell hard in January and early February, hitting a 21-month low of 14.39 low on Feb. 9. Zendesk, which specializes in customer relationship management (CRM) software, went public in May 2014, priced at 9. Initiating coverage, Summit Research gave Zendesk a buy rating with a 25 price target. Zendesk is “executing on its growth strategy in a largely untapped $7.6 billion market, moving successfully toward positive (free cash flow) and profitability, and maintaining revenue growth in the 30%-plus (rate) over the next several years,” Kees said. “Most of Zendesk’s customers are SMBs (small to medium-size businesses), though the company has been moving upmarket, with customer deals with more than 100 seats now almost a third of monthly recurring revenues. Among other benefits, larger customers buy more, tend to purchase annual contracts and raise overall ARPU (average revenue per user). Founded in 2007, Zendesk is the oldest of the vendors targeting SMBs.” Big rivals such as  Microsoft ( MSFT ),   Salesforce.com ( CRM ) and Oracle ( ORCL ) also target midsize businesses. Shares of all three were down a fraction Monday afternoon. “As ZEN moves upmarket, (it) faces deep-pocketed competitors like Salesforce.com and Oracle that can easily bundle customer engagement functionality with their total offerings,” Kees warned. Zendesk is targeting positive free cash flow by 2017, profitability by 2020 and $1 billion in sales by 2020, he noted. For its Q1 ending Thursday, 12 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect a consensus 10-cent loss, flat with a year ago, on revenue up 56% to $66 million. Zendesk CFO Alan Black is expected to leave this year. Kees said, “We are always a little cautious and little worried when a CFO leaves a company. However, we are cautiously optimistic Zendesk will take appropriate steps to identify a CFO who can take the company to the next level ($1 billion in revenue by 2020).”