Piper Jaffray analyst James Fish says his firm's recent channel survey work across networking and security were weaker than he's have seen in past calendar quarters for Cisco Systems (CSCO). Cisco in previous quarters had positive 40% net-scores in Networking compared to a negative 2% this quarter, suggesting a more in-line quarter, Fish tells investors in a research note. Further, Cisco's Security survey results were "especially weak," implying Palo Alto Networks (PANW) is taking market share, the analyst adds. Fish "slightly reduced" his estimates for Cisco but says the stock remains his top networking pick. He keeps an Overweight rating on the name with a $50 price target.

KeyBanc lowered the firm's price target on Palo Alto Networks to $355 from $380 on lower peer multiples, while keeping an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm says that at some point, the case for optimism needs to be backed up by some optimistic data, and its 1Q24 VAR Survey did not deliver it. IT budgets are still in hiding at this point, with just 50% of KeyBanc's respondents meeting or exceeding their goal in the Q1, the lowest quarterly reading since the heart of the pandemic, and sentiment from the follow-up calls with some individuals also has down ticked. The firm's Q4 2023 VAR survey was iffy, the outlook in 2024 from its CIO survey in January was also not great, its SMB survey was worse than expected, and now 2024 is off to a difficult start - "let's just call a trend a trend," KeyBanc adds.