For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 15, 2026 – Zacks Equity Research shares Monday.com (MNDY Quick QuoteMNDY - Free Report) as the Bull of the Day and Evercore (EVR Quick QuoteEVR - Free Report) asthe Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Micron Technology (MU Quick QuoteMU - Free Report) , Sandisk Corp. (SNDK Quick QuoteSNDK - Free Report) and Seagate Technology Holdings (STX Quick QuoteSTX - Free Report) .

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

Monday.com is emerging as an attractive artificial intelligence (AI) software investment as the work management platform expands its AI-powered capabilities, accelerates enterprise adoption, and delivers impressive earnings growth.

Amid the recent tech selloff and growing concerns that AI could disrupt traditional software providers, Monday.com is beginning to challenge that narrative by demonstrating how AI can create new revenue opportunities rather than simply threaten existing business models.

With encouraging earnings estimate revisions and a reasonable valuation, MNDY currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), making it a compelling technology stock to consider as its Q3 results approach next month. 

How Monday.com Is Benefiting From AI

·         Accelerating AI revenue: Most recently, annual recurring revenue (ARR) from AI products doubled sequentially during Q2, accounting for 17% of total net new ARR. This is particularly encouraging because it demonstrates that customers are willing to pay for Monday.com's AI capabilities.

·         AI-powered automation: Monday.com launched its AI Work Platform in May, introducing autonomous AI agents that help businesses automate workflows, qualify sales leads, manage customer-service requests, and execute projects. These capabilities extend across its work management, CRM, and service offerings.

·         Growing enterprise adoption: Customers generating more than $100,000 in ARR increased 37% year over year to 2,019 in Q2. Meanwhile, customers contributing more than $500,000 in ARR increased 68% to 114, highlighting opportunities to expand AI adoption among larger businesses.

·         Improving profitability: Q2 revenue rose 22% year over year to $364.62 million, while non-GAAP operating income increased 35% to $61.1 million. Management also believes AI-assisted productivity can help the company expand margins without proportionately increasing headcount.

Monday.com's Core AI Products

Monday Vibe

An AI-powered application builder that lets users create custom business applications without traditional coding. It became Monday.com's fastest product to surpass $1 million in ARR.

Monday AI Agents

Autonomous agents designed to perform business tasks, coordinate workflows, and execute actions using organizational data, rather than simply providing AI-generated suggestions.

Attractive Growth Outlook & Rising EPS Revisions

Based on Zacks estimates, Monday.com's annual revenue is projected to grow 19% to $1.47 billion in FY26, then another 15% in FY27 to $1.69 billion.

More impressively, annual earnings are expected to climb 27% to $5.58 per share this year, with EPS projected to spike another 19% to $6.63 in FY27.

Supporting this outlook, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate for FY26 has increased from $5.50 to $5.58 over the last 30 days, while FY27 estimates have edged higher from $6.59 to $6.63.

Monday.com's Stellar Execution

Further supporting Monday.com's attractive growth outlook is that the company has exceeded top-and bottom-line expectations in every quarter since it went public in 2021.

Over the last four quarters, MNDY has posted a very impressive average EPS surprise of 23.56% with an average sales surprise of 2.35%.

MNDY's Reasonable Valuation

Despite its attractive growth outlook, at around $86 a share MNDY trades at 15X forward earnings, offering a noticeable discount to the Zacks Internet-Software industry's average of roughly 21X and the benchmark S&P 500's 22X.

MNDY also trades at a very reasonable price-to-forward-sales ratio of less than 3X, compared to the elevated P/S multiples many high-growth AI stocks command.

Bottom Line

Monday.com is emerging as a legitimate AI software beneficiary rather than simply a company incorporating AI into its existing products.

With AI monetization gaining momentum, double-digit revenue and earnings growth projected through FY27, and positive EPS revisions, MNDY is starting to offer investors an appealing combination of growth and value.

Bear of the Day:

Shares of investment banking and advisory firm Evercore could face further downside as financial stocks come under pressure amid rising Treasury yields and renewed concerns about higher interest rates.

With earnings estimates trending sharply lower as uncertainty rises surrounding the investment banking environment, EVR currently lands a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), suggesting investors may want to remain cautious as the stock is now down 25% year to date.

Evercore's Declining Earnings Estimates

The most concerning development for Evercore is the magnitude of downward earnings estimate revisions, signaling deteriorating analyst sentiment despite expectations for continued profitability.

Over the last week, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate for FY26 has fallen nearly 7% from $19.80 to $18.42 per share. More troubling, FY27 EPS estimates have declined 6% from $23.74 to $22.27 per share.

Near-term revisions have seen an even steeper decline, with the current quarter's EPS estimate plunging 23% in the last seven days from $3.70 to $2.84 per share.

This negative trend raises concerns about Evercore's ability to meet Wall Street expectations as financial-market conditions become increasingly uncertain. 

Evercore Faces Risk of Another Earnings Miss

According to the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction), Evercore could fall short of Q3 earnings expectations when it reports in early November.

The "Most Accurate" and recent estimate among Wall Street analysts currently stands at $2.66 per share, and more than 6% below the underlying Zacks Consensus of $2.84, suggesting an increased likelihood of a negative earnings surprise.

Notably, Evercore missed Q2 earnings expectations by more than 3%, with EPS of $2.91 falling short of estimates of $3.02, despite revenue growth supported by stronger dealmaking activity.

Rising Interest Rates Add Pressure

Evercore's investment banking business is particularly sensitive to capital-market activity, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate financing demand.

With the 10-year Treasury yield climbing above 5.3% following hotter-than-expected inflation data, renewed interest rate fears have weighed on financial stocks and broader market sentiment.

Higher borrowing costs could discourage dealmaking and capital raising, potentially pressuring Evercore's advisory and underwriting revenue. Meanwhile, elevated compensation and operating expenses remain additional profitability concerns.

Bottom Line

Although Evercore remains a prominent independent investment bank with long-term growth opportunities, rapidly declining earnings estimates suggest that near-term challenges may be intensifying.

With financial stocks facing heightened volatility and interest rate uncertainty threatening investment banking activity, EVR stock could face additional downside until earnings revisions stabilize and the broader market environment improves.

Additional content:

AI Memory Chip Selloff Looks Overblown: 2 Stocks to Buy on the Dip

Memory stocks are facing fresh selling pressure since Monday as investors question the sustainability of artificial intelligence (AI)-related spending and worry about rising competition. The latest trigger came from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, which reported progress over the weekend on a new DRAM architecture that it claims could boost memory density by 30-50%, allowing more data to be stored in the same physical space.

The market reaction has been sharp. Per CNBC, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics dropped more than 10% and 7%, respectively, yesterday in Seoul. Both touched their lowest levels since August.

In the United States, Micron Technology, Sandisk Corp. and Seagate Technology Holdings have also come under pressure. Over the past two trading sessions, shares of Micron, Sandisk and Seagate fell 4.4%, 6.2% and 4.5%, respectively, reflecting growing nervousness across the memory sector. Investors were already worried about how AI spending is being financed, so the CXMT news landed on a fragile market.

However, the sell-off may be getting ahead of itself. Although CXMT's technological progress could intensify competition over time, the company still needs to prove that it can manufacture its chips at scale. Legacy memory makers still hold a technological lead over CXMT.

For investors, this pullback could present an opportunity rather than a reason to panic. Micron and Sandisk are worth buying now on the recent dip, as both are set to benefit from continued demand for memory and storage driven by AI infrastructure.

Let's assess why these two stocks still offer attractive opportunities despite the recent volatility.

Micron

Micron closed fiscal 2026 on a strong note, with record revenues, high margins and strong cash generation. The outlook is even more striking. The company expects fiscal first-quarter 2027 revenues of $61.5 billion (plus or minus $1.5 billion) and adjusted earnings of $38.15 per share (plus or minus $1), implying roughly 351% revenue growth and 698% earnings growth from a year ago.

HBM revenues grew faster than Micron's total revenues in the fiscal fourth quarter, and the company has already contracted most of its 2027 HBM supply at significantly higher prices. Its HBM4 ramp is progressing, and it is working with NVIDIA on a custom HBM4E solution. NAND is a second engine, with data center SSD revenues approaching $10 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, more than 10 times the year-earlier level, as uses like KV-cache offload widen demand for fast storage. Further out, autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots should need far more memory and storage than today's devices.

Micron is also trying to make this boom more durable. It has signed 26 Strategic Customer Agreements, which are expected to account for more than 35% of revenues through 2030. Customer financial commitments have risen to $32 billion, mostly as cash deposits. That could soften the industry's usual boom-and-bust swings. New capacity is coming from the United States, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan, with Singapore HBM packaging due to start in early 2027 and the ID1 fab in mid-2027. Risks remain, including heavy capital spending and slower price increases, but fundamentals suggest that the long-term story is intact.

MU currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and has a VGM Score of A.

Sandisk

Sandisk has become one of the biggest winners of the AI memory boom, and since its separation from Western Digital it offers a more direct way to invest in demand for NAND flash and data storage. The reason lies in how AI is changing storage needs. As inference and agentic AI generate more data that must be stored, retrieved and served with low delay, NAND is becoming central to architectures built around KV cache and RAG. 

Sandisk is scaling its datacenter business accordingly, widening its enterprise SSD range and moving toward QLC products. It now expects 2026 datacenter exabyte growth in the mid-70% range. It believes demand keeps rising on a rolling basis, and sees the enterprise datacenter flash market reaching about 1.2 zettabytes by 2030.

What sets Sandisk apart is its effort to escape NAND's usual swings in spot prices. Its eight New Business Model agreements are expected to cover more than half of its bits in fiscal 2027 and roughly two-thirds in fiscal 2028. At floor pricing, the signed deals represent at least $93.9 billion in revenues.

For fiscal first-quarter 2027, Sandisk expects revenues of $10.3 billion to $10.8 billion, up from $8.97 billion recorded in the last reported quarter. With multi-year agreements providing visibility and AI inference driving storage demand, the company looks well placed for the years ahead.

SNDK currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 and has a VGM Score of A.

Free: Instant Access to Zacks' Market-Crushing Strategies

Since 2000, our top stock-picking strategies have blown away the S&P's +7.7% average gain per year. Amazingly, they soared with average gains of +48.4%, +50.2% and +56.7% per year.

Today you can tap into those powerful strategies – and the high-potential stocks they uncover – free. No strings attached. 

Get all the details here >>

Media Contact

Zacks Investment Research

800-767-3771 ext. 9339

https://www.zacks.com

Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss.This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performancefor information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.