Salesforce and Snowflake surge, Lordstown Motors pops on new CEO, meme stocks mixed

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports on the day's trending tickers.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Lots of earnings news also driving individual stocks today. I want to check in with Jared Blikre for a closer look at that. And Jared, I took a look at our trending tickers page earlier, and Salesforce was near the top. Looks like it blew away Wall Street estimates.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, that's right. A nice day for Salesforce here. Let's go to the YFi Interactive, and yeah, it's been in the top three trending tickers all day long. We're representing all of them, taking the retail beat to the crowd here.

So, Salesforce up 4 and 1/2 percent. Let's take a one year view. This is a stock that has now just barely climbed into the green over the last year. Previously, it has been a high flyer, but we've seen some of the software stocks take a back seat here, especially the enterprise software ones, at various times.

So, here we go. We see over the last five years it's up 241%. You look at the candlesticks here, it broke out some time ago, and now, it's racing towards its record high, which I believe is 284, something around right in there. So, right up against that, it would be normal for the stock after a surge to consolidate a little bit and then possibly break out, or simply go back and test the lower end of its range.

I do have a few analyst notes here. So, pull up a year to date chart. Piper Sandler, which is rating in at neutral, they did raise the price target to $280 from $240. They're saying that the report showed surprising strength in sales service and multi-cloud deals. Guidance suggests blending operating margin, including Slack, will fall to around 17%, and it could hover here for a few quarters.

Slack, of course, a purchase that is now inside the company. That merger has been affected. They suspect the debate will turn to timing risk on when operating margins can climb back above 20%. A lot of companies in the space having trouble with their margins.

Also want to talk about Barclays here. They rated an overrate, and they raised the price target to $320 from $291, saying that revenue was ahead of expectations, with strength broad based across different cloud products and geographies, suggesting it will be sustainable. And that's kind of the key there. Are companies going to be able to sustain growth going forward?

With the Slack deal now done, the firm continues, the company sees a continuation of stock outperformance in quarters to come. So, rosy outlook from the analyst crowd there on Salesforce, Alexis.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, also, the data cloud software company, Snowflake, on our trending tickers page. It looks like they are going to raise their overall full year revenue forecast, and Wall Street seems to like that news.

JARED BLIKRE: That's right. Snowflake is a stock that got a lot of people excited in its IPO, or close to its IPO. This is a Max chart. So, you can see it went public, I believe, it was last September, right there. And it got a nice run into early December, and then it just tapered off here.

And break of this neck line here was a pretty significant event, but now, we are climbing back into this territory. So, we have a lot of people who are trading in here. We still got some price levels to go, but I'd say, you get to about $310, $320, then you can start breaking out.

So, let me give the analyst commentary on Snowflake here. Piper Sandler rating it in overweight, raising the price target to $305, right where it is right now, from $290, saying, quote, "strong enterprise consumption contributed yet another quarter of triple digit product growth. Concerns over remaining performance obligations are overdone as current RPOs, as they're called, accelerate. Now, it won't take long for Snow--" this is the report going on-- "to grow in its premium valuation, given robust consumption better than expected RPO." Those are those remaining performance obligations. "And continued traction in core verticals."

Also, want to mention briefly. Barclays, which rates at an equal weight, they raised their price target to $295 from $270. Jefferies rates at a hold, raising the price target to $315 from $275. So, analysts liking Snowflake as well here, Alexis.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, and also it looks like that electric vehicle startup, Lordstown, which has been through the wringer, now has a new CEO. Tell us about how Wall Street's taking that news.

JARED BLIKRE: Wall Street likes the fact that they got somewhat of a plan right now. So, the new CEO is Daniel Ninivaggi, and he comes from Icahn Enterprises. Used to be the CEO there. So, he's been in the automotive space for years, if not decades, really knows the space.

And we can see on our EV heat map, in the upper left, guess what? Lordstown Motors, number one. Now, this is a Max chart too. Goes back to the IPO of the initial SPAC, even before the merger, and that was a $10 deal. Most SPACs come to market at $10. And you'll notice, pretty far from $10 right now, even with this 17% pop.

So, going to need to take a little bit more, I think, to convince investors that they have a plan. But I'm sure that will be rolled out shortly. Icahn is an activist investor. He goes into companies, tries to fix what he sees, what he perceives as being broken. So, this is a boost of confidence, but there is a lot, lot more to be done with Lordstown here.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And also, I know you and I have been talking about the meme stocks all week long. Looks like they're mixed today. You've got GameStop surging, but Hertz, for instance, is on the downside. What's going on there?

JARED BLIKRE: No love for the bankrupt companies today. I don't get it, Alexis. Tell me fundamentals matter.

Well, let's go to our heat map here. Palantir up 3%. As you said, GameStop also up 7%. I'm going to bring this to a one month chart. So, we can see that breakout that we got just a few days ago, and that was a really big surge.

And if you take it in the context of the year to date price action, here is the initial GameStop Reddit event. Then we saw another one in March. June saw a bump, and now, we're getting one again. So, I've been calling this meme stock 3.0. Maybe for GameStop, I should call it, 4.0.

Nevertheless, GameStop at a $213 handle still boggles my mind, but save that conversation for another day. Just a quick look at some of the losers here. I did see AMC Theaters in the red. Looks like Macy's is down.

Macy's had that big break out the other day on earnings. And you can see Macy's here, by the way, also notched a two-year high yesterday. Kind of notable because that stock has been so downtrodden, Alexis.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right. Thanks so much, Jared Blikre.