Zscaler ‘s fiscal first quarter earnings surpassed expectations.Analyst polled by FactSet is forecasting earnings of 7 cents a share and revenue of $140.2 million. Looking further ahead, the company is projecting earnings of 37 cents to 38 cents a share for fiscal 2021.

Five9  reported earnings that beat analysts’ estimates. The cloud company’s quarterly earnings were $0.27 per share, compared to analyst expectations of $0.18 a share. Revenue surged +34% year-over-year to a record of $112.1 million. CEO Rowan Trollope told about its acquisition of Inference in a press release, “We believe adding Inference to the Five9 portfolio accelerates our leadership position in AI while also providing customers with a market-leading IVA at a time when customers need efficient real-time assistance,” while adding “Customer engagement is now more paramount than ever.We are excited to build upon our successful partnership with this acquisition.”  

Microsoft  got a price target hike from Stifel analysts. The analysts raised their price target on the technology behemoth’s shares  to $245 from $220.They also affirmed a buy rating.   The analysts cited their expectations that Microsoft should benefit from faster digital transformation due to the coronavirus pandemic as well as a recuperating world economy.

Financial services/mobile payment company Square   said that it bought about 4,709 bitcoins for $50 million. Cryptocurrency Bitcoin has surged +49% in price  so far this year. Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of “economic empowerment” and that is offers a way for the world to participate in a global monetary system, which aligns with the company’s purpose. The investment in Bitcoin represents around 1% of Square’s total assets as of the end of second-quarter 2020. Square launched bitcoin trading in 2018 for its Cash App customers. The company recently launched the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on crypto innovation. Tickeron's AI-powered scorecard rates SQ a "STRONG BUY". According to Tickeron, SQ's MACD Histogram crosses above signal line The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) for SQ turned positive on September 25, 2020.

Oracle reported fiscal first quarter earnings that beat analysts; expectations. The software/cloud giant’s  adjusted earnings came in at 93 cents a share, compared to the 86 cents a share estimated by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue increased +2% year-over-year to  $9.37 billion, surpassing the $9.19 billion expected by analysts. Q1 revenue from cloud services and license support grew +2%. The company’s Fusion Cloud ERP Suite grew +33% year-over-year.In 31 of 46 similar past instances, the stock price increased further within the following month.

Square Inc.  posted second quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. The digital payments company’s earnings released one day ahead of schedule on what it called "early external access of the company’s quarterly financials' to the group's financials". The Jack Dorsey-led company’s gross profit surged +28% year-over-year to $597 million.Its revenues climbed +64% to $1.92 billion, beating estimates. A substantial part in the results can be attributed to the government’s Paycheck Protection program (PPP) stimulus measure against covid-19 economic impact.

Microsoft Corp.   shares fell Tuesday, after  potential suitors surfaced with respect to the planned sale of TikTok's U.S. operations over the coming weeks. News broke Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump ordered that Chinese app Tiktok should divest its U.S. operations amid concerns over data privacy linked to its China-based owners, ByteDance, following an investigation by Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. On Sunday, Microsoft said that it's looking at buying TikTok's U.S. business. Tiktok has been downloaded over 175 million times in the U.S. alone and has 1 billion global users.Tickeron's analysis proposes that the odds of a continued Uptrend are 67%. Following a 3-day Advance, the price is estimated to grow further.

Microsoft's   business messaging app Microsoft Teams is partnering with soft drink behemoth Coca-Cola . The  five-year partnership with Coca-Cola   gives the latter access to a suite of Microsoft products such as Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. Since mid-March, the total number of minutes spent in Teams meetings increased by +200% to 2.7 billion.According to the company, total video calls surged +1,000% in March, with overall usage on mobile also growing in countries hardest-hit by the covid-19 pandemic.

Microsoft has indicated that its sales would fall short of guidance as a result of the Coronavirus crisis.  On Wednesday, the tech behemoth said that it will miss its previous sales guidance of between $10.75 billion and $11.15 billion for its "more personal computing" business, which includes Windows OEM and Surface. While the company thinks demand for Windows is in line with their expectations, the supply chain is taking more time than anticipated in returning to normal operations.  That’s why,  for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 the company does not expect to meet their More Personal Computing segment guidance, since Windows OEM and Surface  are more adversely affected  than previously expected.

  The online storage/file hosting platform’s GAAP net loss came in at -2 cents a share for the latest quarter, compared to the loss of -3 cents a share that analysts polled by FactSet had estimated.The loss was same as the year-ago quarter. Dropbox’s revenue climbed +19% year-over-year to $446 million in the quarter, beating analysts’ expectation of $443.3 million. There were 14.3 million paying users for Dropbox at the end of the fourth quarter, up +13% from a year earlier. Average revenue per paying user grew +4.5% to $125. The board authorized share buyback of upto $600 million.

Microsoft  reported fiscal second-quarter results that surpassed analyst expectations. The tech behemoth’s earnings for the quarter came in at $1.51 per share, compared to analysts’ estimate of  $1.32. Revenue increased +14% year-over-year to $36.9 billion, also exceeding analysts’ forecast of $36.67 billion. Microsoft’s personal computing segment raked in $13.2 billion in revenue in the quarter. In late October, Microsoft won the 10-year $10 billion contract – Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure - from the Pentagon .It did so after beating cloud competitor Amazon Web Services.  

Tech behemoth Microsoft Corp. got a $195 price target from analysts at Wedbush.  Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and his team boosted price target on Microsoft shares to $195 from $185.

Square got a rating boost from Bank of America (BofA) this week. Bank of America analyst Jason Kupferberg boosted his rating on the mobile-payments company to buy from neutral.  Kupferberg thinks that Square shares now have attractive prices for investors seeking to add the stock to their portfolios or bulk up their current holdings (as reported in Bloomberg). The BofA analyst also suggested that Square's revenue guidance for 2020 looks "conservative" .

On Monday, tech giant Microsoft announced that it won a court order that allowed the company to take control of 50 websites that a North Korea-linked hacking group was using to make cyber-attacks. The hacker group called “Thallium,” believed to be operating from North Korea, was using spear phishing technique to gather  information about individuals through the public domain and social media.As a result, hackers got access to the users’ emails, contact lists and calendar appointments (according to Microsoft). Individuals targeted by Thallium included think tanks, university staff, government employees,  and those working on nuclear proliferation issues.

Revenue, however, fell behind estimates. The software and technology company’s non-GAAP net income for the quarter came in at $3 billion, or 90 cents a share – higher than the 89 cents a share that analyst polled by FactSet had estimated. Revenue of $9.61 billion came in lower than analysts’ expectation of $9.65 billion. Oracle CEO Safra Catz  mentioned strengths  in Fusion and NetSuite cloud applications businesses with Fusion [Enterprise Resource Planning] revenues growing 37% and NetSuite ERP revenues growing 29%.According to Catz, ERP segment of its cloud applications business has enabled Oracle to deliver a “double-digit EPS growth rate year after year”; he is sanguine that the company will deliver similar results again this year. For the coming quarter, analysts are expecting net income of $3.2 billion, or 97 cents a share, on sales of $9.8 billion.

CrowdStrike Holdings (Nasdaq: CRWD) is an infrastructure software company that offers security solutions at different levels through its Falcon platform.It jumped from around $60 to over $100 in August, only to fall back below the $50 level in the past few months. From a fundamental perspective, CrowdStrike seems to be running in to the same problem a number of companies that debuted in 2019 have run in to—if you aren't profitable, your stock will pay the price.

Okta got a rating downgrade from analysts at Canaccord Genuity, who think the stock is already fully valued. Canaccord Genuity analysts lowered their rating on the cloud software company’s stock to hold from buy. They also slashed their price target on the stock to $120 from $145. Analyst Richard Davis indicated that Okta is "quite expensive”.The stock has rallied more than +100% from its low in December 2018.  Year to date, it has climbed more than +80%, but is slightly below its summer high of above $140. Nevertheless, Davis still views Okta as the leader by a large margin, while mentioning that competition is tightening a bit. In October, the company revealed various new offerings across security, authentication and more categories.

Twilio got a re-affimed rating from RBC Capital analyst . RBC Capital analyst Alex Zukin reiterated his outperform rating on shares of the cloud communications platform as a service company."In terms of the election, while guidance for next year will include some contribution, if all political campaigns were considered together and all used Twilio (both of which are very aggressive assumptions), it could be a 10% customer," Zukin wrote.  

Its revenue, though increased from the year-ago period, still fell short of expectations. The electronic payment services company’s third-quarter 2019 earnings came in at $2.84 per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.4%.Earnings were +31.5% higher compared to the year-ago quarter. Total revenue increased +10.1% year-over-year to $787 million – but missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by -4%. EFT Processing Segment saw total revenues surge +21% (+26% in constant currency) year over year.

On Thursday, NetApp shares got a rating downgrade and a price target cut from Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall. Hall lowered his rating on the cloud data services company’s stock to sell from buy.Hill indicated in his note that NetApp’s Enterprise License Agreement guidance of 2% of total revenue in FY’20, which is heavily second-half loaded, may be difficult to achieve given that the deals tend to largely involve larger enterprise customers. However, several other analysts might have had a somewhat different view in the recent past, regarding NetApp shares.