A tale of two Covid stocks
Jay Chaudry, founder and chief executive officer of Zscaler Inc.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Zscaler shares surged 26% on Thursday. Splunk plunged 23%.
Both reported quarterly results late Wednesday and had very different-pandemic related stories to share with investors.
Zscaler, a security software vendor for the cloud, said revenue in the period ended October climbed 52% and the company raised its forecast for the year. Splunk, a provider of data analytics software, said revenue shrank 11% from a year earlier, missing estimates for a third straight period.
For Zscaler, momentum has picked up throughout the year as large enterprises seek ways to protect their increasingly disparate data and secure their networks now that employees are connecting from more places and devices. After Thursday’s rally, the stock is now up 298% for the year, the third-best performance among U.S. tech stocks behind only Zoom and Fastly.
“Covid