Analysts also weigh in on Devon Energy, AppLovin, and Cloudflare.
These reports, excerpted and edited by Barron’s, were issued recently by investment and research firms. The reports are a sampling of analysts’ thinking; they should not be considered the views or recommendations of Barron’s. Some of the reports’ issuers have provided, or hope to provide, investment-banking or other services to the companies being analyzed.
Zscaler • ZS-Nasdaq
In Line • $125.84 on June 10
by Evercore ISI
Zscaler recently hosted its annual customer conference in Las Vegas, alongside a smaller analyst briefing. As expected, Zscaler did not provide financial updates, with the next formal update likely at its A-Day later this year. We came away incrementally positive on Zscaler’s positioning, particularly around customer stickiness, its expanding portfolio, and early interest in its artificial-intelligence security road map. Overall, the event was constructive, though we do not expect it to materially shift N/T investor sentiment. AI monetization remains early and is unlikely to affect results over the next several quarters. The key debate is whether Zscaler can translate its AI and platform opportunities into a meaningful annual-recurring-revenue contribution while navigating recent sales disruption. We understand that the two sales leaders who departed during the fiscal third quarter collectively oversaw about 40% of bookings, which explains the execution risk given the scale of the business they managed. Target price/base case: $155.
ServiceNow • NOW-NYSE
Outperform • $114.19 on June 10
by Oppenheimer
We reiterate our Outperform rating on ServiceNow after meeting with Nenshad Bardolliwalia, ServiceNow’s group vice president of project management, AI Platform. We left the meeting incrementally positive on ServiceNow’s second-half 2026 opportunities and potential for business reacceleration next year. Nevertheless, AI disruption concerns are creating a boisterous debate and an overhang on ServiceNow in 2026, though investors could be underappreciating the stickiness of the ServiceNow platform in the enterprise market. In our view, ServiceNow profiles many attractive investment traits. Specifically, we believe the business offers compelling fiscal-year 2030 financial targets, appears on pace for a 10%-plus AI business exiting 2026, has a subscription revenue gross margin floor guidance, and multiple growth drivers during the AI transition to be a good compounder. Price target: $130.
Devon Energy • DVN-NYSE
Buy • $44.07 on June 10
by Siebert Williams Shank
Devon Energy recently provided its pro forma second-quarter 2026/2026 outlook, which incorporates the Coterra Energy acquisition. Overall, the guidance was slightly negative from an estimate revisions standpoint, mainly due to capital expenditure coming in slightly higher than expected. Along with its updated pricing, cost and tax guidance, as well as updated hedging disclosures, we reduce our 2026 and 2027 free-cash-flow estimates by 3.9% and 4.2%, respectively. Positively, Devon announced targeting to return up to 70% of FCF to shareholders, while retiring $1.25 billion of debt in 2026....Devon remains on track to reach its $1 billion annual pretax synergy run rate by year-end 2027 and expects to capture $600 million of pretax synergies in 2027. Price target: $67.
AppLovin • APP-Nasdaq
Buy • $520.84 on June 15
By Benchmark Equity Research
At a recent investor conference, AppLovin reinforced confidence that its consumer advertising business remains in the early stages of a multiyear expansion, with management positioning the end-of-June General Availability launch as a product milestone that broadens advertiser functionality, expands addressable market opportunities, and lowers onboarding friction rather than a near-term customer acquisition event. Management emphasized a measured marketing rollout following launch, continued confidence in scaling the consumer business well beyond gaming, significant upside from increasing wallet share beyond the current roughly 10% level, sustained 80%-plus adjusted Ebitda margins, and additional long-term growth opportunities from supply expansion across gaming, mobile apps, mobile web, and Connected TV. Management appears highly confident in the durability of AppLovin’s growth algorithm and the long-term potential of its consumer advertising platform. Target price: $775.
Cloudflare • NET-NYSE
Buy • $234 on June 9
by BTIG
We attended Cloudflare’s recent investor day. As expected, management’s tone was bullish across the board. Management raised its long-term financial outlook, outlining a clear path to achieving a “Rule of 50” in 2027 and expanding long-term operating margins to 30%-plus, driven by structural unit economic advantages and internal AI efficiencies. A core theme of the event was Cloudflare’s ambition to become the de facto “Cloud for AI Agents,” leveraging its architecture to execute agentic workloads 60% to 70% cheaper than legacy hyperscalers. To this point, Cloudflare’s Developer platform ARR grew 137% in 2025, supported by a 1,700% year-over-year surge in daily AI agent requests across its network. Lastly, while the surprise year-end retirement of Mark Anderson is a notable headline, the company continues to ramp productivity of quota carrying reps, and underlying enterprise momentum remains strong. As AI accelerates adoption across both its security and developer portfolios, we remain confident in the long-term outlook for Cloudflare. We increase our price target to $269.
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