The volume of acquisitions in Software appears to be picking up with over 70 transactions announced year-to-date including last night's Red Hat (RHT) takeover by IBM (IBM), JPMorgan analyst Sterling Auty tells investors in a research note. The analyst puts the deals announced this year into three buckets: strategic, where the acquirer looks to gain a strong foothold in a new segment, vertical acquiring companies, and valuation, with acquirers going after assets with discounted valuations. Auty sees number of companies fitting those same characteristics across his coverage universe. In the strategic category, the analyst sees Okta (OKTA), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), ServiceNow (NOW), RingCentral (RNG), Aspen Technology (AZPN) and DocuSign (DOCU) as potential acquisition targets. In the vertical industry exposure category, Auty lists Guidewire (GWRE), Veeva (VEEV), Medidata (MDSO), Ellie Mae (ELLI) and Q2 Holdings (QTWO) as potential targets. And in the attractive valuation bucket, the analyst sees FireEye (FEYE), Carbon Black (CBLK), Secureworks (SCWX), Akamai (AKAM) and LogMeln (LOGM) as potential candidates to get acquired.

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.

Citi analyst Tyler Radke raised the firm's price target on ServiceNow to $906 from $896 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The analyst maintains a positive view on ServiceNow, holding estimates just above the high end of guidance as the firm's partner checks suggest solid demand and further Pro Plus interest. Commentary continued a similarly positive tone to Q4, as partners saw larger deal sizes and stronger pipelines than this time last year, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Citi says that while the shares have outperformed peers and the current valuation creates a high bar, a "beat/raise" quarter heading into the analyst and second half of 2024 growth acceleration "provide a positive event path."