Back to top

Image: Bigstock

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Gartner, Five9, Zoom Video Communications, Microsoft and Zuora

Read MoreHide Full Article

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – December 30, 2019 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Gartner Inc. (IT - Free Report) , Five9 Inc. (FIVN - Free Report) , Zoom Video Communications Inc. (ZM - Free Report) , Microsoft Corp. (MSFT - Free Report) and Zuora Inc. (ZUO - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:

4 Stocks to Make the Most of the Cloud Computing Boom in 2020

The global business landscape is changing rapidly with cloud computing taking up a large share of traditional tech spending. Notably, there has been accelerated adoption of cloud-computing strategies within enterprises with analysts reportedly expecting more than 80% of businesses to shift to the cloud by the end of 2020.

Increasing acceptance has made cloud computing one of the most sought-after niches in the tech space.

Cloud Computing Going Mainstream

World’s leading information technology research and advisory firm Gartner Inc. estimates $216 billion of IT spending to be shifted to the cloud in 2020 compared with $111 billion in 2016. This shows that companies prefer other firms to take care of their servers, storage and networking gear and are not willing to spend money for construction and maintenance of costly information management technology and infrastructure. 

Precisely, with the adoption of public cloud computing services, it has been optimal for clients to spend only for computing, networking and storage, while scraping recurring expenditures for updating their own servers and software years after years.

SaaS to Remain the Largest Market Segment in 2020

Among the three major cloud computing services, software-as-a-service (SaaS) will outpace infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) to remain the largest market segment, per Gartner. Across the globe in 2020, SaaS is expected to contribute $116 billion in revenues to public cloud computing service business, surpassing $50 billion and $39.7 billion revenues for IaaS and PaaS, respectively, added the global research and advisory firm. 

However, in terms of year-over-year worldwide revenue growth projection by Gartner, IaaS will outpace SaaS and PaaS to record the fastest growth of 24% in 2020. This is because there has been an increasing need for infrastructure at a scale among recent applications, which traditional data centers are unable to fulfil.

4 Cloud-Software Stocks to Buy Now

To sum up, it has become increasingly evident that enterprises are fast-tracking their shift to public cloud service providers from own data centers. This probably led Gartner to forecast that the market for global public cloud service will grow almost 17% to $266.4 billion in 2020.

Given the encouraging projection for cloud-software companies in 2020, it would be wise to buy four promising SaaS stocks. These firms carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Five9 Inc., headquartered in San Ramon, CA, is among the leading providers of cloud software for contact centers. The stock surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the past four quarters, the average positive earnings surprise being 46.8%. For 2020, the company is likely to see earnings growth of 10.4%.

Zoom Video Communications Inc., headquartered in San Jose, CA, helps clients to have face-to-face video experiences through its cloud-native platform. Notably, the company has witnessed positive earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2020 over the past 30 days.

Redmond, WA-based Microsoft Corp. helps clients to connect to and use office tools like Microsoft Office 365 over the Internet. The company not only beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in all the prior four quarters but is expected to see earnings growth of 12.6% in fiscal 2020.

Zuora Inc.– headquartered in San Mateo, CA – is primarily involved in providing cloud-based software on a subscription basis. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 24.7% for the past four quarters. For fiscal 2020, the stock is likely to see 34.6% earnings growth.

Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020

In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 top tickers for the entirety of 2020?

These 10 are painstakingly hand-picked from over 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank. They are our primary picks to buy and hold. Start Your Access to the New Zacks Top 10 Stocks >>

Media Contact

Zacks Investment Research

800-767-3771 ext. 9339

support@zacks.com                                   

http://www.zacks.com                                                 

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 http://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.

Published in