Companies in the Technology sector have received a lot of coverage today as analysts weigh in on Weibo (WB) and Oracle Corp (ORCL).
Weibo (WB)
Barclays analyst Gregory Zhao maintained a Buy rating on Weibo yesterday and set a price target of $75. The company’s shares opened today at $62.88, close to its 52-week low of $51.15.
Zhao said:
“We stay with our Overweight rating on Weibo and maintain our $75 target. Positives: User engagement is still solid, and MAU/DAU reached 462mn/200mn. Weibo remains a key destination for the social media marketing budgets of global top-ranking brands, which bolstered its KA ads growth ahead of SME ads growth. Social media content saw continued improvement with MCNs doubling y/y to 2,600. Things to Monitor: SME ad revenue growth slowed to 14% y/y (vs. 35% in 3Q18) due to macro headwinds, gaming regulation and competition (more inventories). Alibaba’s disciplined marketing strategies affected Weibo’s related-party revenues, which we expect will linger into 1Q19. Yizhibo’s consolidation generated c.2ppt margin impact, based on our estimates.”
According to TipRanks.com, Zhao is a 3-star analyst with an average return of 1.6% and a 46.7% success rate. Zhao covers the Technology sector, focusing on stocks such as NetEase Inc, Tencent, and Baidu.
The word on The Street in general, suggests a Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating for Weibo with a $68.44 average price target.
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Oracle Corp (ORCL)
In a report released today, Raimo Lenschow from Barclays maintained a Hold rating on Oracle Corp, with a price target of $55. The company’s shares opened today at $51.94, close to its 52-week high of $53.48.
Lenschow said:
“We also note the favourable FX movements since the company provided Q3 guidance (implying slightly better than guided 4% FX headwind to revenue), which should provide support to reported numbers this quarter. Comps get even easier in Q4, but we believe consensus expectations seem to already reflect the easy 2H comps, with 3% and 5% ccy growth for Q3 and Q4, respectively (based on our FX calculations), vs. 2% ccy growth for 1H. As such, we see limited upside to estimates from here.VAR survey shows a sequential downtick: Our latest VAR survey results came back downbeat vs. the last quarter. The channel performance this quarter vs. the plan showed a sequential downtick, but the outlook for next quarter was stable. VARs also noted greater than normal discounting and less than normal large deal activity this quarter.”
According to TipRanks.com, Lenschow is a top 25 analyst with an average return of 19.2% and a 74.2% success rate. Lenschow covers the Technology sector, focusing on stocks such as Ceridian HCM Holding Inc, SolarWinds Corporation, and Cornerstone Ondemand.
Currently, the analyst consensus on Oracle Corp is a Moderate Buy with an average price target of $53.69.
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