Several Robinhood Favorites See Selling Pressure on Wednesday
Some of the tech stocks that have been bid up to the stratosphere lately with the help of retail investors are coming back to earth a little today.
Palantir Technologies (PLTR) - Get Report is among the hardest-hit names: The data-mining/analytics software firm is down 12.6% after Morgan Stanley downgraded shares to Underweight.
“With PLTR up 155% since [its] listing with very little change in the fundamental story, the risk/reward paradigm shifts decidedly negative for the shares,” wrote analyst Keith Weiss. As a quick Twitter search of its stock symbol demonstrates, Palantir has become a retail favorite since going public in late September, thanks in part to hopes that it will win more large government contracts under a Biden Administration.
Meanwhile, electric car and clean energy plays have bounced from their morning lows, but select names are still seeing large declines. Workhorse Group (WKHS) - Get Report is down 21.9%, Lordstown Motors (RIDE) - Get Report is down 6.8% and FuelCell Energy (FCEL) - Get Report is down 18.6%. Tesla (TSLA) - Get Report is down 2.7%, reducing its year-to-date gains to a “mere” 580%.
Along with Palantir, a number of other enterprise software names are moving lower today. Salesforce.com (CRM) - Get Report and Box’s (BOX) - Get Report earnings reports appear to be playing roles.
Salesforce is down 6.9% after posting October quarter results after the close on Tuesday, issuing guidance for its next two quarters and its next fiscal year, and announcing a $25 billion-plus deal -- widely rumored to be in the works -- to buy Slack Technologies (WORK) - Get Report. While Salesforce’s top-line numbers (both its results and guidance) were moderately above consensus estimates, pre-earnings expectations were high, and its January quarter EPS guidance was below consensus.
Box, which has been facing stiff competition from Microsoft (MSFT) - Get Report and others, is down 6.8% after it slightly beat October quarter estimates on Wednesday morning, but issued weaker-than-expected January quarter sales guidance.
Sales data software provider ZoomInfo (ZI) - Get Report, which recently raised more than $550 million through a stock offering, is down 7.6%. Automotive software firm Cerence (CRNC) - Get Report is down 7.8%, AI software provider Veritone (VERI) - Get Report is down 4.2%, bill-payment software provider Bill.com (BILL) - Get Report is down 4% and project management software firm Upland Software (UPLD) - Get Report is down 7.2%.
The selloff in high-multiple software names comes as cloud data warehousing leader Snowflake (SNOW) - Get Report -- a company that has an exceptionally high valuation even by enterprise software standards -- gets set to report after the bell. Snowflake is down 1.2% in Wednesday trading, but still up more than 150% from its $120 September IPO price.
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