TSP Weekly Tech Stock Update—Jan 13, 2024
This Week: NOW, MSFT & PANW reach new all-time highs, Twilio gets a new CEO, Match attracts an activist, CRWD/ZS/NTNX new 52-week highs, Mizuho upgrades GitLab, Citi is bullish on Smartsheet and more.
Hello from Rob…
—Shares of Arista Networks (ANET, $252.03), a provider of cloud networking solutions, on Friday hit a new all-time high of $254.73. The market cap now tops $78 billion. In 2023, Arista stock gained 94%.
JP Morgan this week raised its Arista price target to $297 from $230, saying it sees a multi-year acceleration in the company’s growth based on AI investments, new datacenter builds and a switching refresh cycle at cloud companies. Melius Research upgraded Arista to ‘Buy’ with a price target of $300 because it sees the company benefiting from a generative AI spending boost that should help drive up consensus estimates.
—On Friday, Amazon (AMZN, $154.62) shares hit a new 52-week high of $157.17. The stock is approaching resistance at $158.65 and $168.40 from April 2022. BMO Capital started coverage of Amazon at ‘Outperform’ with a price target of $200, saying it sees the company benefiting from secular cloud tailwinds in 2024, with AWS leading the foundational and middle layer of the generative AI/machine learning stack.
Goldman Sachs boosted its Amazon target to $200 from $190. For AWS, the firm is modeling Q4 growth of 14% (up from +12% on Q3) and sees 2024 acceleration to 17% growth based on easing customer optimizations, a growing contribution from AI-related revenue and the resumption of paused cloud migration projects as part of a more normalized enterprise spending backdrop. Previously, Mizuho raised its Amazon target to $220.
—Shares of Match Group (MTCH, $36.88) on Tuesday traded as high as $42.42 after The WSJ reported that activist investor Elliott Investment Management has built a roughly $1-billion stake in the online-dating company and plans to enter into discussions with management about how to improve the stock’s lagging performance. The Elliott boost was short-lived, as the shares ended the week with a gain of just 0.5%. In 2023, Match stock declined 12%. The shares are down sharply from its 52-week high of $54.60 reached in January 2023.
*Inside This Issue: Twilio Shares Rise After Management Shake-Up
—Paid subscribers will receive the February 2024 PDF of Tech-Stock Prospector (TSP #264) via email on Tuesday, February 13.
—Paid subscribers have access to the TSP Market Overview and TSP Portfolio Updates sections inside this issue.