It was a great week for service companies in general. However, not all service companies are created equal in a pandemic. For example, when will travel companies return to pre-crisis levels of earnings and revenues? One area that has consistently shown an ability to weather COVID are technology companies. In fact, many have seen a surge in their business throughout. Here are five companies that broke out last week that are seeing an increase in their outlook and share price.
The Technology sector was right at the top of the list for best-performing S&P 500 sector last week along with the Communications sector with 4.43% and 4.63% weekly returns, respectively. Just looking at the leaderboard of sectors and you can immediately point to five stocks that did well last week. That would be stating the obvious to focus on those names, and so it pays to look beyond them.
As you move down to the industry group level, Technology Services led the way in the market with a 6.16% weekly return. Technology Services was followed by Consumer Services with a 5.23% weekly gain and Finance with a 5.23% weekly gain.
Within the Technology Services industry group, there are 4 sub-industries in Packaged Software, Internet Software/Services, Data Processing Services, and Information Technology Services. The top performer out of the group was Packaged Software with an 8.13% weekly performance, but there were significant breakouts in all of these industries for the week.
The following list are five of the 10 companies that had major moves last week. What separates these five companies are the fact they’re seeing positive trends in analyst estimates for their earnings and revenue.
Technology Service Stock #1: Anaplan Inc (NYSE: PLAN)
Anaplan is a cloud-based connected planning platform that brings together traditionally disconnected database structures in finance, sales, supply chain, marketing, human resources, and operations.
While the company isn’t generating a non-GAAP profit, analysts are projecting 15.9% and 21.6% EPS growth for 2021 and 2022. In the last four quarters, the PLAN has beaten analyst estimates by nearly 30% or more and in the most recent quarter, it beat estimates by 66.7%. That earnings beat on August 26 caused the stock to gap higher and cause positive revisions to their 2021 and 2022 EPS.
Technology Service Stock #2: Zuora Inc (NYSE: ZUO)
Zuora is a cloud-based subscription software company that helps companies transform themselves into a subscription business. Their Zuora Central platform, billing service, RevPro, CPQ, and Collect tools offer a complete suite of products designed for companies to transform themselves.
Similar to PLAN, ZUO isn’t turning a non-GAAP profit but it has seen significant projected growth in the next two fiscal years. The company also has a history of beating analyst estimates by double-digit margins in the last four quarters. Their last announcement saw them beat estimates by 40%. Their next earnings release is on September 2 after the market close.
Technology Service Stock #3: Fluent Inc (NASDAQ: FLNT)
Fluent is a digital marketing service the delivers data and performance-based marketing executions to approximately 500 consumer brands, direct marketers and agencies across a diverse set of industries.
The company is currently projected to turn a non-GAAP profit for their 2020 fiscal year after losing $0.02 last year. In the last week, the company saw significant positive revisions to its 2020 and 2021 fiscal year earnings. The current year was just increased from a $0.03 loss to a $0.04 gain and 2021 was positively revised from $0.06 to $0.13.
Technology Service Stock #4: Workday Inc (NASDAQ: WDAY)
Workday provides enterprise level cloud applications that is used to optimize their financial and human capital resource management.
Analysts are currently projected to grow their current-year EPS at 20.7%, next year by 21.6% and the next five years by 21.75%. Revenue growth for 2021 and 2022 is projected to increase 15.5% and 17.2%, respectively.
Technology Service Stock #5: eGain Corp (NASDAQ: EGAN)
EGain is a global cloud software-as-a-service (SAAS) provider of customer engagement solutions. The company’s application incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, analytics and APIs.
Analysts are projecting the company to grow 23.8% from last year and they have beaten analysts by wide margins in three of the past four quarters. The momentum earnings beats may cause further positive revisions to upcoming quarters and fiscal years.