Analysts Mixed on Enterprise Software Vendors

(MoneyWatch)  Merrill Lynch cut its rating on SAP from buy to neutral, saying that it doesn't see a corporate IT spending recovery in 2009, so there is question as to the company's assumptions on license fees. But that hardly seems like a uniform take of the market on the software industry, which is more mixed and less certain.

• Yesterday, Standard & Poor's raised the rating on Microsoft from hold to buy because of new products including Windows 7 and Bing. RBC Capital Markets and Davenport both upgraded their ratings earlier this year, though in January, Davenport downgraded from buy to neutral.
• Citigroup has raised Oracle's target by $3 and maintained its buy rating. Overall, analysts have left ratings where they've been since last year.
• BMC Software saw upgrades from Thomas Weisel and UBS this winter, but relatively recent downgrades to neutral by Credit Suisse, UBS, and MKM Partners.
• Symantec was downgraded by Jefferies & Co. but upgraded by Thomas Weisel and RBC Capital Markets since April.
• So far this year, CA has received two downgrades from Credit Suisse and Jefferies.
• Citigroup and UBS downgraded Adobe, although RBC Capital Markets upgraded.
• Autodesk saw KeyBanc Capital Markets downgrade them twice and then upgrade, eventually ending up at a hold. UBS upgraded to neutral.
• Neither Cadence Design Systems nor Synopsys, both chip design software tools vendors, saw a change.
• Dassault Systemes has seen a change in ratings this year.
• Intuit had two downgrades (Jefferies and UBS) and an upgrade from Wedbush Morgan.

There are some big software names I left out, including IBM and HP, because a rating could be too much influenced by economic outlook for services or hardware. But, by and large, I don't think that equity analysts offer a clear view as to how the enterprise software market as a whole is likely to do.

Coin image via Flickr user K3nna, CC 2.0.