Technology

Report by Sales Pulse Research

SPR provides recent field feedback on AVGO’s actions, users reactions and vendors who are benefitting. While many acquisitions do not produce the increases in revenue and cost synergies that were promised, based upon AVGO’s aggressive approach, SPR expects it will immediately deliver strong results for both metrics. Despite the disruption and animosity it is creating, SPR is picking up many examples of end users who are paying much more to AVGO then they were prior to this acquisition (price hikes of 100-1000% have been reported). These end users are locked into some or all the VMware products. The cost of switching is very high and, in some cases, will take years. Other vendors discussed include Nutanix, IBM Red Hat and HashiCorp.

Report by ETR

ETR highlights the vendors best and worst positioned for the year ahead based on spending intentions data collected from their Jan 24 TSIS, which saw participation from 1766 IT Decision-Makers, including 308 Fortune 500 and 423 Global 2000 organisations. Respondents are, on average, more optimistic on 2024 spending than 3 months ago, with full year spend anticipated to grow +4.3% vs. 2023. However, Q1 is slightly tempered, now sitting at +2.4% y/y growth. Vendor outlook upgrades include Gitlab (has seen a sharp rebound in its Net Score), SentinelOne, Elastic and IBM. While there are downgrades for Datadog (Net Score hits an all-time low), CyberArk and HashiCorp.

Technology

Report by Summit Insights Group

Former software engineer, Srini Nandury, who was the original bear on Nutanix and JFrog, highlights three names that continue to offer material downside…

Gitlab (GTLB) - Reminds Srini of JFrog; market fragmentation and intense competition will limit growth.
HashiCorp (HCP) - Growth to slow more quickly than investors realise; VMware catching on faster as it did with Nutanix. Stock could easily fall to $22.
UiPath (PATH) - Turned bearish with the stock at $70 last June. Expensive solution in a commoditising market; Microsoft is quickly vaulting to the leadership position in RPA.