ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW) closed at $145.36 on October 19 and has returned 45.77% over six months. Its annual revenue runs at $14.73 billion and grew 24.00% last quarter, helped by workflow software spreading from one department to another at low added cost. The article argues growth gets harder at this size, since each year requires selling more, and stock-based pay reached $1.96 billion in the latest year. Debt is 67.54% of equity, so demand rather than funding is the main constraint. At 27.78 times analysts' next-year expectations, the price assumes growth continues, and the article suggests tracking the absolute revenue added each quarter.
Summary written by Upside AI from the original article. Read the source for full details.
Read the original on Yahoo Finance ↗
Keywords
NOWsoftwareartificial intelligencevaluation
Open a keyword to see other news on the same topic.
Related news
- ServiceNow Fell 20% Over a Year But This Wall Street Analyst Predicts 70% Gains From Here
ServiceNow trades at $145.33, nearly 20% below a year ago, even though its AI business has passed $1 billion in annual contract value. The average analyst target of $152.23 implies 4.7% upside, while Bernstein's Peter Weed has an Outperform rating and a $248 target, implying 70.6% upside. The stock fell from a 52-week high of $192.97 to a low of $81.24 as fears that AI agents would erode seat-based software hit the group, and second-quarter operating income dropped 54.75% to $162M. In the latest quarter, revenue rose 24.0% to $3.987B and EPS of $0.90 beat the $0.86 consensus. The author leans bullish but considers the consensus target a more realistic 12-month marker than the 70% call.
- Why You Should Think About Palantir Differently Now
Palantir (PLTR) trades at 78.2 times sales, versus 3.1 for the S&P 500, and management's pitch has shifted from customer counts to spending per client. In fiscal Q2 2026, executives emphasized 'sovereign AI', an architecture in which companies keep full control of their data and the AI built on it. U.S. commercial customers reached 653, up 35%, while U.S. commercial revenue rose 149% to $764 million and U.S. contract values rose 153% to $2.132 billion. Total revenue grew 92.8% to $1.94 billion, and operating margin rose to 47.1% from 26.8%. However, the top 20 customers accounted for about 40% of total revenue over the twelve months to June 2026, which the article identifies as the main risk.
- As AI Supercharges Hackers, Cybersecurity Stocks Split Into Platforms and Point Solutions
A CrowdStrike threat report says attacks by AI-powered hackers jumped 89% last year, pushing buyers toward single connected platforms rather than many separate tools. Even so, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks are each down more than 13% from their record highs in early October, and Okta fell more than 7% this week after a report that OpenAI may buy a cybersecurity startup. The article attributes the selloff to valuation rather than lost customers or revenue, as many of these stocks trade above 100 times earnings after gaining over 100% in 2026. It separates platform players like CrowdStrike (Falcon Flex contracted value above $2 billion) and Palo Alto Networks (about 220 platformization deals in a recent quarter) from point solutions such as Okta, which mainly verifies logins, while noting SentinelOne, Cloudflare and Zscaler are harder to classify.
- What Is Twilio’s (TWLO) Economic Moat, and Is It Widening or Narrowing?
Twilio (TWLO) moves messages and calls for other companies, and the article assesses whether its economic moat is widening or narrowing. Its advantages include carrier relationships, phone numbers and country-level regulatory approvals, plus high switching costs because messaging code is embedded in customers' applications. However, messages are essentially a commodity, with operating profit at just 7.83% of revenue because carriers take a cut, and revenue growth has settled at 22.00% over the latest three months. Shares closed at $257.29 on October 19, up 76.7% over six months and 136% over a year, and trade at 43.67 times analysts' expectations for next year. The article concludes the moat is real, narrow and roughly holding rather than widening, and that operating margin is the metric to watch.
- Can MongoDB (MDB) Hold Its Guidance After Losing Its Chief Executive?
MongoDB (MDB) closed at $348.69 on October 19 and is up 32% over six months. CEO Chirantan Desai left on September 28 to join Meta, and shares fell about 15% that day, even though the company reaffirmed its guidance of $2.99-$3.03 billion in revenue for the year to January. That guidance implies about 22% growth, below the 30.50% revenue growth of the prior quarter, and the balance sheet carries almost no debt, so the article argues the forecast can be held. Dev Ittycheria, who ran the company from 2014 until last year, has returned as interim CEO while the board searches. The article says the market reacted to less certainty about the outlook rather than an error, and notes that with a 3.68% operating margin a small miss would move earnings sharply, while the shares trade at 70.42 times expected next-year earnings.
- Is Cloudflare (NET) Worth It When Most of Its Users Pay Nothing?
Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) closed at $297.58 on October 19 and has returned 45.3% over six months. Its free tier gives the company a huge user base, and paying customers largely come from that pool, with revenue up 35.90% last quarter. However, the company still reports an operating margin of -7.60% and debt at 217.86% of equity, despite positive cash flow. At 178.57 times analysts' next-year estimates, the article argues the business is admirable but the stock is hard to justify at this level, and suggests watching the paid customer count rather than revenue.
Related markets
Latest news
- Mastercard Opens Up AI Agent Payments With Early Access and Live Demo
Mastercard has opened early access to Agent Pay for Machines, a system that lets AI agents discover services, agree to terms and pay for them within spending limits set by humans. Jorn Lambert of Mastercard demonstrated a live transaction at Cloudflare's Connect conference. The system is built on the x402 protocol, with agents generating signed payment vouchers when they receive a “402 Payment Required” response. In a demo, a marketing agent for agency Hype made nine payments to two independent merchants on one budget, settled through Coinbase, Base and BVNK in fiat or stablecoins. The launch follows pilots with Cloudflare, Ant International, AWS, BVNK and Coinbase, and comes alongside Mastercard's recent Stablecoin Security tool and Global Money Platform.
- Ethereum Just Closed Out Its Best Quarter Since 2021. If History Is Any Guide, This Happens Next.
Ethereum rose 71% in Q3 2026, its best quarter since early 2021, when it ended the year up 376%. The article reviews history: after nine quarters since 2019 with gains of 50% or more, the first four were followed by stronger returns, but after late 2020 the pattern weakened, with two-year returns of -4.8% (Q1 2021), flat (2023) and -42.6% (2024). Q3 2025's 66.7% gain was followed by a 35.3% drop within 12 months. The author says the data neither confirms nor rules out another strong run, and that price momentum tells little about long-term value. On-chain, users paid $15.9 million in network fees in September, and Ethereum held $144.3 billion in stablecoins (47.7% of the total) and $16.9 billion in tokenized real-world assets, leading all networks.
- American Airlines Rises 5% Ahead of Earnings as Oil Prices Ease; United Airlines and Delta Climb 3%
American Airlines (AAL) rose 5% to $12.27, United Airlines (UAL) gained 3% to $98.46 and Delta Air Lines (DAL) climbed 3% to $76.75 as West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.5% to $97.05 per barrel. Jet fuel is among the airlines' largest costs, and most U.S. carriers don't hedge fuel, so lower oil prices ease margin pressure. American has guided to a loss per share for Q3 2026, though analysts expect higher revenue than a year earlier after record operating revenue in Q2. The U.S. Global Jets ETF (JETS) rose 4% to $26.71, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) gained 0.6% to $771.16. The article suggests American's pre-earnings gain may reflect positioning ahead of the report, which could reverse quickly if results or commentary fall short.
- Paul Tudor Jones makes chilling 2027 US stock market call: ‘I’ll be short the whole year.’ Is your nest egg at risk?
Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones told CNBC that 2027 will be very challenging for the stock market and that he will be short the whole year. He worries that share supply could surge as possible sales from Anthropic and OpenAI, and SpaceX shares released after its IPO, hit the market once lockups end, after buybacks and M&A had supported stocks over the past four years. He compares this to the period before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, when repeated unlocks kept adding supply. Jones also flagged a U.S. deficit of $1.99 trillion and a possible $20 to $25 rise in oil prices due to the U.S.-Iran conflict. The article adds similar warnings from JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Bridgewater's Ray Dalio, while noting that no one can predict the market with certainty.
- Chip stocks shrug off a scary morning, but history says the shakeout isn't over
Chip stocks recovered on Tuesday after the PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX) dipped to its lowest level since early August in the morning, following an eight-session losing streak, and buyers pushed it back above Friday's close. About 3 in 4 stocks in a 60-stock Yahoo Finance chip basket turned higher, led by GlobalFoundries (GFS), while chip-equipment makers Lam Research (LRCX), KLA (KLAC), and Applied Materials (AMAT), plus Arm (ARM), stayed lower. Yahoo Finance calculations show that after every losing streak of seven sessions or more since 1994, the index traded below that streak's final close within a month, with the typical dip after the longest streaks around 9%, while Tuesday's dip barely reached 1%. The article flags key levels: support at 11,000 to 11,140, a lower zone at 10,450 to 10,500 if that fails, and resistance at 12,600 to 12,700. BofA Global Research called last week's selloff a 'positioning-driven hiccup on the fringes of the AI trade.'
- The $1 Trillion AI Spending Boom Could Force the Fed to Raise Rates — and You and I May Pay the Price
AI-related spending could approach $1 trillion in 2027, about 3% of U.S. GDP, adding to inflation pressure that could push the Fed to raise rates again from 3.75% to 4.00%, with a meeting on Oct. 27–28 and another increase widely expected. Higher rates would hit small businesses, indebted consumers, and housing hardest, while cash-generating hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon have more room to absorb costs. For example, raising a $400,000 mortgage rate from 6% to 7% adds about $260 a month, whereas another quarter-point hike might barely register for a hyperscaler committing $200 billion to AI. CoreWeave (CRWV) reportedly carries about $35 billion in debt and $640 million in quarterly interest expenses, a risk the author says investors cannot ignore. The author's main takeaway is that the bigger risk is not that the AI boom ends, but that keeping it going makes everything else more expensive.
Get the briefing on Telegram or Zalo
Join the Upside Telegram channel or Zalo group for the Vietnam stocks and gold briefing at 8:00 and 19:00 (Vietnam time) on trading days, plus a weekly wrap on Saturday morning.