Cloud Stocks Survive Wild Week on Wall Street
August 14, 2011
By samdizzy
After a five-day roller coaster ride, cloud computing stocks fell only 1 percent for the week ending Aug. 12, 2011. Within our Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index, seven of 20 companies actually saw their shares rise for the week. Plus, Carbonite — the cloud storage provider — actually launched an IPO amid the turbulence.
First, the overall bad news: The recent turbulence has wiped out overall gains for 2011, and our Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index is down 1.36% since January 1, 2011. But here’s a look at the weekly winners and losers for the week ending Aug. 12.
Winners:
Constant Contact (CTCT, +7.66%): Shares got a one-week bump amid very little company news. Perhaps investors were simply seeking a value play; shares in Constant Contact, provider of SaaS-based email marketing, are down 41.53 percent since January 1, so value investors apparently jumped in this week. On the business front, Constant Contact recently said more than 100,000 customers have discovered mobile apps through the Constant Contact marketplace.
CoreSite (COR, +3.91%): The data center provider on Aug. 4 raised its fiscal-year 2011 earnings projections. Plus, CoreSite has completed a SSAE 16 Type 2 audit covering eleven data centers. SSAE 16 is replacing SAS 70 Type 1 and Type 2 audits.
VMware (VMW, +3.87%): The virtualization specialist is gearing up for VMworld, a major conference in Las Vegas (Aug. 29, Sept. 1). Plus, VMworld CEO Paul Maritz is confirmed to speak at Dell World in October, so it’s safe to expect a steady drumbeat of updates from VMware. Perhaps the biggest news in recent weeks involves VMware adjusting its pricing to address customer concerns.
Rackspace Hosting (RAX, +3.06%): The company back on Aug. 5 noted that its annual revenue run rate now exceeds $1 billion, and growth to $2 billion will be even faster. (Disclosure: I own shares in Rackspace.)
Losers:
Vocus Inc. (VOCS, -11.81%): Shares fell after an analyst downgraded the stock, saying the company’s expansion plan is risky.
Kenexa Corp. (KNXA, -10.98%): Shares have settled down after climbing earlier this month amid strong earnings growth.
Citrix Systems Inc. (CTXS, -5.68%): The company’s stock has fallen sharply since concerns about slowing growth cropped up in May 2011. But Citrix this week also acquired RingCube to help VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) deployments.
Concur Technologies Inc. (CNQR, -5.18%): Shares dropped amid the market turmoil, but the SaaS provider of expense report management continues to have strong fundamentals, according to Jeffrey Keene, an investment advisor who blogs for Talkin’ Cloud.
Outside of our Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index, Carbonite had to lower its IPO price amid the market turbulence, but ultimately completed its IPO to raise money for potential acquisitions.
The bigger story here remains the overall market trends. Our Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index was up 20 percent in Q1, but over the past two weeks all of those Q1 gains have been wiped out. The Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index is now down 1.36% since January 1, 2011.
Disclosure: I have holdings in two Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index companies – Rackspace and Red Hat.
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