Analysts Mixed on Enterprise Software Vendors
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.
Coin image via Flickr user K3nna, CC 2.0.