Cloud and data analytics stocks extend losses after bloodbath
Source: Sayantani
Feb 8 Shares of companies offering data analytics and cloud services, including Tableau Software Inc , fell sharply again on Monday amid worries that their customers were cutting spending.
Tableau shares fell another 10 percent to $37.28. The stock lost half its market value on Friday after it cut its 2016 revenue forecast, helping spark a selloff in tech stocks that dragged down the whole market.
The selling resumed on Monday, helping to drag down the Nasdaq Composite Index 2.8 percent to its lowest in nearly 1-1/2 years in morning trading.
"Is Tableau the canary in the coal mine on IT spending or is competition muddying the waters?" RBC Capital Markets analysts asked in a research note.
If Tableau, with its lower average selling prices, was finding it difficult to sell its products to enterprise customers, it could mean trouble for companies with more expensive products, RBC said.
However, the brokerage noted that companies like Microsoft Corp and SAP SE have reported strong demand.
Shares of Salesforce.com Inc, Splunk Inc and Workday Inc, which declined on Friday, were down again on Monday, as were stocks of Teradata Corp, Hortonworks Inc, Cornerstone OnDemand Inc and Qlik Technologies Inc.
These stocks had high valuations before the selloff on Friday, driven by years of hype that spending from enterprise customers was moving to big-data analytics and cloud computing.
"If the selling continues and the global economy continues to slow, that's when you will see spending get cut and cut hard and that's why investors are selling ahead of that," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.
Big tech stocks such as Facebook Inc and Google-owner Alphabet Inc were also down on Monday amid worries that tech stocks overall were overvalued.
Apple Inc was up slightly.
Adding to the gloom, IT services provider Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp forecast its slowest revenue growth in 14 years for the current quarter, as clients worldwide rein in IT spending. Cognizant's shares were down 7 percent.
RBC cut its price targets on many cloud computing stocks including Qlik, Splunk and Workday on Monday. It cut its target price on Tableau on Friday.
LinkedIn Corp was among the few bright spots in the technology sector. The company's shares rose as much as 6.4 percent, but that was after a 43 percent drop on Friday that wiped out nearly $11 billion of its market value.
The social network for professionals shocked Wall Street on Thursday with a revenue forecast that fell far short of expectations. (Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)
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