Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and Salesforce Drove Nasdaq Up

After a six weeks of low performance, shares of tech companies began to come back to life. Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and Salesforce brought Nasdaq to climb 2% over the last five days of trading.

Three tech companies, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and Salesforce has performed well and ending a lifeless beginning of 2016. Cyber security vendor Palo Alto Networks rallied 16% last week, while big data analytics company Splunk soared 19% and Salesforce was up 12%.

In regard the sales prospect, Palo Alto Networks CEO Mark McLaughlin told analyst as quoted by CNBC, "The customers that I talked with said that security remains a priority spend item for them," he said about his January travel to Europe and Asia. "We haven't seen anything to indicate that what we're seeing in the stock market means anything about the macro economy yet."

Splunk earnings and outlook also showed higher than expected peformance. Analyst asked CEO Douglas Merrit regarding the negative comment from other businessess in recent weeks and how it correlates to IT spending. Chief Merrit said, "Within our Splunk sales cycles, we're not seeing that. In many cases ... [customers are] seeming to prioritize spend for Splunk right now."

Meanwhile Salesforce announce the company raised its annual earning guidance. The report of better-than-expected results give a boost of confidence to Nasdaq, climbing almost 2% over the past five trading days. That leave the index was down slightly in February.

Although investors stil suffer heavy losses in 2016, but performance of those three companies gave a relieve to investors. As investors began to have confidence in software spending.

Palo Alto Networks is reported to continue its dominance in cyber security as the company released its guidance for second-quarter 2016 earnings on Thursday. The Street reported the company once again beat expectations in either second-quarter and third quarter guidance. The company released its better-than-expected third quarter guidance at 45% growth.

The company also projected five-year average annual earnings growth rate of 36%, which is six times more than the expected growth rate of the S&P 500 index. For the quarter ended in January, Palo Alto Networks booked a $334.7 million revenue, better than analyst expected at $318.3 million, which equal to 40 cents per share which is higher than analyst expectation at 39 cents.

While Splunk reported a better than expected result with 49% increase of revenue over year to $220 million, as Motley Fool reported. That includes 44% increase of revenue from license and 59.4% in service and maintenance, to $141.4 million and $78.6 million respectively. The company booked $14.4 million net income, or $0.11 per share.

Palo Alto Networks, Splunk and Salesforce brought Nasdaq to climb 2% as the companies reported a better than expected result and a strong earnings guidance.