Credit Suisse dove headfirst into the software sector, Tuesday, as analyst Phil Winslow initiated or assumed coverage on 22 software companies, including giants such as $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$, $Oracle (ORCL.US)$ and $Adobe (ADBE.US)$.
Winslow started his new coverage by referring to Marc Andreessen's 2011 statement in which he said, "Software is eating the world," by saying that now, "Software is life."
"Much of the debate about the software industry, publicly traded or privately held, is still around valuation, as opposed to the long-duration value creation potential of the best companies," Winslow said.
Winslow started his coverage of $Oracle (ORCL.US)$, $ServiceNow (NOW.US)$, $Workday (WDAY.US)$, Splunk (ORCL), $Vmware (VMW.US)$, $Zscaler (ZS.US)$, $Snowflake (SNOW.US)$ , $Autodesk (ADSK.US)$ , $UiPath (PATH.US)$ , $MongoDB (MDB.US)$ and $Confluent (CFLT.US)$ with outperform ratings, and also assumed coverage of $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ , $Salesforce (CRM.US)$ and $Palo Alto Networks (PANW.US)$ and their outperform ratings.
Winslow set neutral ratings on $Adobe (ADBE.US)$ , $Workday (WDAY.US)$ , $Zendesk (ZEN.US)$ , $Palantir (PLTR.US)$ , $Cloudflare (NET.US)$ and $Zeta Global (ZETA.US)$ , and started coverage of $Check Point Software (CHKP.US)$ and $Teradata Corp (TDC.US)$ at underperform.
Even with software having what he called an "outsized influence" on the stock market, and the strategic paths many companies have taken, Winslow said he believes the industry "is still in the early stages of disruptive and powerful technological advances."
With regards to some of the companies in his coverage, Winslow said that for at least the next five years, Microsoft should deliver "mid-to-high teens revenue growth" that will be driven by 20% growth in its Intelligent Cloud business.
Winslow said that he is impressed by Adobe's "successful transition to subscription[s], which increased the value of its large creative and document-centric installed bases," but that those positive items are already reflected in the company's current stock price valuation.
Winslow said $Splunk (SPLK.US)$'s stock price hasn't reflected the growth of company's core products, its shift to the cloud, or its expansion into data-streaming, which he said should grow the company's recurring revenue by 25% to 30% annually. On Monday, Splunk said Chief Executive Doug Merritt is stepping down after six years at the data-management software company.

$Moderna (MRNA.US)$ stock gained 7.8% Thursday, its virtual R&D day, which began at 8 a.m. Eastern. It plans to announce the development of a vaccine candidate that will protect against Covid-19 and the flu, to be known as mRNA-1073. 
Moderna was a very different company at the time of its last virtual R&D day in September of 2020. Still a clinical-stage company at the time, Moderna had no authorized or approved products. That changed months later, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is expected to bring in $20.1 billion in revenues this year alone.
Its stock price has been up more than 300% this year. 
Just to mention, another vaccine maker $Novavax (NVAX.US)$ had also initiated an early-stage study to test its combined flu and COVID-19 vaccine. However, the same scenario didn't show on its stock price. Kinda tricky.
Source: Moderna Stock Jumped Because It Just Unveiled a Two-in-One Vaccine for Covid and the Flu