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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. Scalper1 News
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