NICE (NASDAQ:NICE) shares rose 2% on Tuesday as investment firm Piper Sandler upgraded the Israeli-based software company, citing win-rates and "positive" new business trends.
Analyst James Fish raised his rating on NICE (NICE) to overweight from neutral, and boosted his per-share price target to $227. Fish noted that the company has a more "resilient" customer base, and has also picked up "available" cloud seats as rivals have continued to struggle due to a number of issues.
In addition, Fish cited the second half of the year as an "inflection point" for NICE (NICE) due to recurring revenue and the potential spin-out of its FCC business.
Fish said that NICE's valuation is "not a steal" based on current estimates. However, Fish said that with "positive dynamics" and valuation, "we have a more favorable view" of the company's shares at their current levels.
Delving deeper, Fish noted NICE's (NICE) CXone product should be one of the "primary winners" in the customer experience market as it goes from on-premise to contact center as a service, or CCaas, with potentially up to 11.5M cloud seats by 2026 from its current 5M level.
Fish said that the struggles of "incumbents" are increasing and should shift more than $1B in recurring revenue this year. That situation could see NICE (NICE) win more of the "cloud seats" that are available and business stabilizes and possibly increases in the medium term.
Earlier this month, NICE (NICE) announced new Robotic Process Automation capabilities, using AI to identify focused opportunities for automation.
Analysts are largely positive on Nice (NICE). It has a BUY rating from Seeking Alpha authors, while Wall Street analysts rate it a BUY. Conversely, Seeking Alpha's quant system, which consistently beats the market, rates NICE a HOLD.