Report
Dave Nicoski ...
  • Ross LaDuke
EUR 235.08 For Business Accounts Only

Vermilion Compass: Weekly Equity Strategy

Market in wait-and-see mode; Upgrading Tech

The S&P 500 has paused just below logical resistance at the downtrend, and we believe the equity market is in wait-and-see mode for incremental information on (1) upcoming U.S.-China trade talks and (2) the Fed meeting this week, (3) ongoing earnings reports, and (4) whether a deal on border security will be made. We should get some answers shortly with trade talks set to commence and the FOMC announcement/Chair Powell's press conference both on Wednesday.

• We are upgrading equal-weighted Technology to overweight. Our equal-weighted Tech Sector has surged to the top of our RSR ranks due to broad-based strength in semiconductors last week. Solar stocks are another Group that is emerging as leadership, presenting an attractive opportunity... see pages 2-3. In today's report we highlight attractive small-cap Technology stocks... see pages 10-23.

• Key stocks, subsectors at price resistance. We highlight a selection of key stocks (MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL, V, NFLX, and ADBE) and subsectors (semis, biotech, and homebuilders) which are all up against logical price resistance. While breakouts are not the baseline expectation, they would be a welcomed sight... see below and page 4.

• Cyclicals and growth stocks are beginning to lead. Cap- and equal-weighted Discretionary vs. Staples ratios show cyclicals are overtaking defensives as leadership. Similarly, growth stocks are emerging as leadership relative to value stocks... see page 5.
Underlyings
ACI Worldwide Inc.

ACI Worldwide develops, markets, installs, and supports a range of software products and solutions primarily focused on facilitating real-time electronic payments. The company's payment capabilities, technologies, and solutions are marketed under the brand name Universal Payments. In addition to its own products, the company distributes, or acts as a sales agent for software developed by third parties. These products and services are used globally by banks, financial intermediaries, and a range of transaction-generating endpoints, including automated teller machines, merchant point-of-sale terminals, bank branches, mobile phones, tablets, corporations, and internet commerce sites.

Agilysys Inc.

Agilysys is a provider of hospitality software. The company delivers technology solutions for gaming, hotels, resorts and cruise, corporate foodservice management, restaurants, universities, stadia and healthcare. The company provides solutions in the industry, including point of sales, property management, inventory and procurement, payments, and related applications, to manage the entire guest journey. The company is a developer and marketer of software enabled solutions and services to the hospitality industry, including software solutions fully integrated with third party hardware and operating systems; support, maintenance and subscription services; and other services.

Alarm.com Holdings Inc.

Alarm.com is a platform for the intelligently connected property. The company provides a suite of cloud-based solutions for smart residential and commercial properties. The company's service provider partners can deploy its interactive security, video monitoring, intelligent automation and energy management solutions as stand-alone offerings or as combined solutions to address the needs of a range of customers. The company's subscribers can connect to their property through the company's family of mobile apps, websites, and engagement platforms like voice control through Amazon Echo and Google Home, wearable devices like the Apple Watch and TV platforms such as Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

Benefitfocus Inc.

Benefitfocus provides a cloud-based benefits management platform for buyers (consumers, employees and employers) and sellers (insurance brokers, carriers and suppliers). The Benefitfocus Platform enable organizations and individuals transact benefits. The company's employer, carrier, broker and supplier customers uses its platform to manage, scale and exchange benefits data. The Benefitfocus Platform is designed for consumers to access all of their benefits in one place. The company's solutions support medical benefit plans and non-medical benefits, such as, dental, life, disability insurance, income protection, digital health and financial wellness.

Calix Networks

Calix is a provider of cloud and software platforms, systems and software for fiber- and copper-based network architectures. The company is also a provider of software defined access and cloud products focused on access networks and the subscriber. The company's portfolio allows for a range of subscriber services to be provisioned and delivered over a single unified network. The company's access systems can deliver voice and data services, broadband services, mobile broadband, as well as high-definition video and online gaming. The company's premises systems enable communications service providers to manage the smart home and business and provide new services to their device enabled subscribers.

Ciena Corporation

Ciena is a networking systems, services and software company, providing solutions that enable a range of network operators to deploy and manage networks that deliver services to businesses and consumers. The company provides hardware, software and services that support the transport, switching, aggregation, service delivery and management of video, data and voice traffic on communications networks. The company's solutions are used by communications service providers, cable and multiservice operators, Web-scale providers, submarine network operators, governments, enterprises, research and education institutions and other network operators.

Cornerstone Ondemand Inc.

Cornerstone OnDemand is a provider of learning and human capital management software, delivered as Software-as-a-Service. The company's enterprise human capital management platform is composed of four product suites: Recruiting suite, which helps organizations to attract, hire, and onboard employees; Learning suite, which provides learning management software designed to scale with the organization; Performance suite, which provides tools to manage goal setting, performance reviews, and competency assessments, among others; and HR suite, which provides an aggregated view of all employee data with workforce planning, self-service management, and compliance reporting capabilities.

Coupa Software Inc.

Coupa Software is a provider of business spend management (BSM) solutions. The company provides a cloud-based BSM platform that delivers a range of capabilities that would typically require the purchase and use of multiple disparate point applications. The company's main platform consists of procurement, invoicing, expense management and payments modules that form the transactional engine for managing a company's business spend. In addition, the company's platform provides supporting modules to help companies further manage their spend, including strategic sourcing, spend analysis, contract management, supplier management, and contingent workforce management.

Cree Inc.

Cree is a provider of bandgap semiconductor products for power and radio-frequency (RF) applications and lighting-class light emitting diode (LED) products. The company's products are used for applications such as transportation, power supplies, inverters, wireless systems, indoor and outdoor lighting, electronic signs and signals and video displays. The company operates in two segments: Wolfspeed, which consists of silicon carbide and gallium nitride (GaN) materials, power devices and RF devices based on silicon and bandgap semiconductor materials; and LED Products, which consists of LED chips and LED components. The company's LED chip products include blue and green LED chips based on GaN and related materials.

DASAN Zhone Solutions

DASAN Zhone Solutions is a provider of ultra-broadband network access solutions and communications platforms. The company researchs, develops, tests, sells, manufactures and supports platforms in five areas: broadband access, mobile backhaul, Ethernet switching with Software Defined Networking (SDN) capabilities, new enterprise solutions based on Passive Optical LAN, and new generation of SDN/Network Function Virtualization solutions for unified wired and wireless networks. The company's broadband access products provide a variety of options for carriers and service providers to connect residential and business customers.

Enphase Energy Inc.

Enphase Energy is a global energy technology company. The company designs, develops, manufactures and sells home energy solutions that connect energy generation, energy storage and control and communications management on one platform. The company's semiconductor-based microinverter converts energy at the individual solar module level and, combines with its proprietary networking and software technologies to provide energy monitoring and control. The Enphase Home Energy Solution with IQ consists of four primary components: Enphase microinverters, the AC Battery?, an Envoy gateway, and Enlighten cloud-based software.

Fabrinet

Five9 Inc.

Five9 is a provider of cloud software for contact centers. The company's Virtual Contact Center (VCC), cloud platform and applications, allows simultaneous management and optimization of customer interactions across voice, chat, email, web, social media and mobile channels, either directly or through its application programming interfaces. The company's VCC cloud platform matches each customer interaction with an appropriate agent resource and delivers customer data to the agent in real-time through integrations with adjacent enterprise applications, such as customer relationship management software. The company provides its solution through a software-as-a-service business model with recurring subscriptions.

Fluidigm

Fluidigm creates, manufactures, and markets a range of products and services, including instruments, reagents and software that are used by researchers worldwide. The company markets technologies and life science tools, including preparatory and analytical instruments for Mass Cytometry, polymerase chain reaction, Library Prep, Single Cell Genomics, and consumables, including integrated fluidic circuits, assays, and reagents. The company's product offerings include: Mass Cytometry, Microfluidics and Single Cell Microfluidics.

HubSpot Inc.

HubSpot provides a cloud-based marketing, sales, and customer service software platform, which it refers to as its Growth Platform. The company's Growth Platform features integrated applications that create an adaptable customer experience. These integrated applications include a CRM, search engine optimization, blogging, website content management, messaging, chatbots, social media, marketing automation, email, predictive lead scoring, sales productivity, ticketing and helpdesk tools, customer NPS surveys, analytics, and reporting. The company also provides other services, which primarily consist of customer on-boarding and training services.

Inphi Corporation

Inphi is a provider of analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions for the communications and datacenter markets. The company's analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions provide an interface between analog and mixed signals and digital information in systems such as telecommunications transport systems, enterprise networking equipment and datacenters. The company has a range of products in its portfolio, including products that have commercially shipped, products for which the company has shipped engineering samples and products under development, that perform a range of functions such as amplifying, encoding, multiplexing, demultiplexing, and retiming signals at speeds up to 400 Gbps.

LivePerson Inc.

LivePerson is a cloud computing or software-as-a-service provider of solutions on a hosted basis. The company is organized into two operating segments: Business and Consumer. The Business segment enables brands to utilize the company's LiveEngage's engine to connect with consumers through an integrated suite of mobile and online business messaging technologies. The Consumer segment facilitates online transactions between independent service providers and individual consumers seeking information and knowledge for a fee via mobile and online messaging. The company's products and services include: LiveEngage, Professional Services and Consumer Offering.

New Relic Inc.

New Relic is a provider of an integrated, multi-tenant, cloud-based instrumentation and analytics platform that enables users to collect, store and analyze amounts of data in real time. The company's products include: New Relic Application Performance Management, which provides visibility into the performance and usage of server-based applications; New Relic Mobile, which provides code-level visibility into the performance and health of mobile applications running on the iOS and Android mobile operating systems; New Relic Browser; New Relic Synthetics; New Relic Infrastructure; and New Relic Insights.

OSI Systems Inc.

OSI Systems, together with its subsidiaries, is a designer and manufacturer of electronic systems and components for applications. The company sells its products and provides related services in various markets, including homeland security, healthcare, defense and aerospace. The company's operating divisions are: Security, which provides security and inspection systems, security screening solutions and related services; Healthcare, which provides patient monitoring, diagnostic cardiology, and anesthesia delivery and ventilation systems; Optoelectronics and Manufacturing, which provides electronic components and electronic manufacturing services for the Security and Healthcare divisions.

Par Technology Corp.

PAR Technology, through its subsidiaries, operates in the following segments: Restaurant/Retail, which provides point-of-sale (POS) hardware, software and technical solutions to the restaurant and retail industries, including cloud-based, software-as-a-service Brink POS and on-premise POS PixelPoint solutions, POS hardware platforms, and installation, technical, and maintenance support services; and Government, which provides intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance solutions and mission systems support to the U.S. Department of Defense and other Federal agencies, including systems engineering and evaluation, space and satellite support services, and information systems support.

Photronics Inc.

Photronics is a manufacturer of photomasks, which are photographic quartz or glass plates containing microscopic images of electronic circuits. Photomasks are a main element in the manufacture of semiconductors and flat-panel displays (FPDs), and are used as masters to transfer circuit patterns onto semiconductor wafers and FPD substrates during the fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs or semiconductors), and a variety of FPDs and, to a lesser extent, other types of electrical and optical components. The company supports customers across the spectrum of IC production and FPD technologies by manufacturing photomasks using electron beam or optical (laser-based) systems.

Rapid7 Inc.

Rapid7 is focusing on security with visibility, analytics, and automation delivered through its Insight cloud. The company's Insight Platform product offerings include: InsightVM, which provides guidance based on customized threat models; InsightIDR, which is designed to enable organizations to detect and respond to cyber security incidents and breaches across physical, virtual and cloud assets; InsightAppSec, which provides application security testing that analyzes web applications for security vulnerabilities; and InsightConnect, which is used by security personnel to connect their various disparate solutions and automate workflows with which they can identify risk and respond to incidents.

SecureWorks

SecureWorks is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides information security solutions focused on protecting its customers from cyber attacks. The company's integrated suite of solutions include: managed security, through which it provides its customers global visibility and insight into malicious activity enabling them to detect and remediate threats; and security and risk consulting, through which it advises its customers on a variety of security and risk-related matters. The company's proprietary Counter Threat Platform collects, aggregates, correlates and analyzes daily events from its customer base and uses algorithms to detect malicious activity and deliver security countermeasures.

SendGrid

SendGrid operates as a digital communication platform, enabling businesses to engage with their customers via email reliably, effectively and at scale. The company's cloud-based platform allows for frictionless adoption and immediate value creation for businesses, providing their developers and marketers with the tools to seamlessly and effectively reach their customers using email. The company operations in the United States and United Kingdom, with sales to customers in the United States and internationally.

Tech Data Corporation

Tech Data is an information technology distribution and solutions companies. The company's customers include resellers, direct marketers, retailers, corporate resellers and managed service providers. The company groups its offerings into two primary solutions portfolios: Endpoint Solutions, which primarily includes personal computer systems, mobile phones and accessories, printers, peripherals, supplies, endpoint technology software and consumer electronics; and Advanced Solutions, which primarily includes data center technologies such as storage, networking, servers, other technology software and converged and hyper-converged infrastructure.

Zix Corp.

Zix is a provider of cloud email security, productivity and compliance solutions. The company delivers a solutions for email encryption and data loss prevention (DLP), threat protection and archiving. The company serves organizations in the healthcare, financial services, and insurance and government sectors. Co.'s email encryption and DLP capabilities enable the secure exchange of email that includes sensitive information. Through a secure messaging service, Email Encryption allows an enterprise to use policy-driven rules to determine which email messages should be sent securely or quarantined for review to comply with regulations or company-defined policies.

Zscaler Inc.

Zscaler is a cloud security company that developed a platform incorporating security functionalities needed to enable users to safely utilize authorized applications and services based on an organization's policies. The company's solution is a purpose-built, multi-tenant, distributed cloud security platform that secures access for users and devices to applications and services, regardless of location. The company delivers its solutions using a software-as-a-service business model and sells subscriptions to customers to access its cloud platform, together with related support services. The company conducts business worldwide, with presence in North America, Europe and Asia.

Provider
Vermilion Research
Vermilion Research

Vermilion Research delivers timely, actionable, and unique research inputs to professional investors. Our research strategists highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various proprietary technical indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. We believe our research methodology, which is not limited by industry sector or market capitalization, enables us to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing all actively traded stocks into coherent sectors, then into logical industry groups. We then apply our proprietary relative strength tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sectors or groups, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. Vermilion offers U.S. and global equity market research products. Vermilion’s research team, which has received numerous awards and accolades, has a combined 70 year of experience in the analysis of investment securities.

Analysts
Dave Nicoski

Ross LaDuke

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