JPMorgan's Mark Murphy Puts Buy-Equivalent On Workday: Here's Why

On Tuesday, JPMorgan issued a company note on Workday Inc WDAY after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, but provided weak revenue guidance for the first quarter of 2016. Analysts at JPMorgan upgraded Workday from Neutral to Overweight and reaffirmed their $85 price target.

Mark Murphy and Albert Chi, analysts at JPMorgan, wrote, "We are confident in Workday's multi-year growth potential. Very large established markets and a strong cloud product supported by uniquely high customer satisfaction and the pedigree and experience of its executive management team form a rare combination that we believe could push Workday to the top echelon of the software industry."

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Justification: Bookings Growth

Analysts at JPMorgan gave one key reason why they upgraded Workday: bookings growth.

JPMorgan noted that Workday expects their Annual Contract Value growth rate to accelerate in 2016, with 30 percent of their customers subscribing to their high margin HCM and financials platform. As companies continue to shift toward cloud computing, analysts believe that Workday could become a company that owns employee data and financial data: two of the 4-5 large pools of data that are moving into the Cloud.

At The Time Of This Writing...

Workday was recently seen trading up 8.52 percent on the day at $65.61.