Datadog, Palantir, Zoom, Enphase, First Solar Trending

Analysts are intrested in these 5 stocks: ( (DDOG) ), ( (PLTR) ), ( (ZM) ), ( (ENPH) ) and ( (FSLR) ). Here is a breakdown of their recent ratings and the rationale behind them.

Datadog is back in favor with Wall Street as Morgan Stanley’s Sanjit Singh upgrades the stock to “Overweight” (equivalent to a Buy) with a price target of $180, seeing 2026 as an inflection year. Singh notes that Datadog’s core observability business—still more than 90% of total revenue—had worried investors as growth cooled and uncertainty lingered around its largest AI customer, OpenAI. Now, he argues, the backdrop is improving: public cloud growth is re-accelerating for reasons beyond AI alone, and corporate spending on cloud migration and digital transformation is picking up again. On top of this, Singh highlights a new growth leg from “agentic” AI architectures and AI agents, which will need deep observability to function reliably, and he points to newer products such as cloud security, database monitoring and incident management starting to contribute meaningfully. His team forecasts a robust 23% compound annual growth rate in core revenue (excluding OpenAI) and 25% free cash flow growth from 2025 through 2028, reaching an estimated $4.09 in free cash flow per share by 2028. While he still sees near-term risk to Datadog’s 2026 guidance, he frames that as a potential “clearing event” that could shift investor focus squarely onto improving fundamentals and the strengthening demand pillars behind observability.

Palantir Technologies is being pitched as a major winner in the coming AI and defense “supercycle” as Citi’s Tyler Radke upgrades the stock to Buy/High Risk and sharply lifts his target price to $235. Radke notes that despite a powerful run in recent years—driven by rapid revenue acceleration and striking margin expansion that has challenged traditional valuation metrics—the shares have gone largely sideways even as his 2025–2026 revenue estimates climbed more than 10% since mid-year. He now expects 2026 to be another year of big positive surprises, with CIO and industry discussions pointing to faster AI budgets and more concrete use cases across enterprises. On the commercial side, Palantir’s strength in data ontology and its “forward deployed” engineering model position it well for the ramp in enterprise AI and agentic systems, supported by more than 250% year-on-year growth in “remaining deal value” (RDV), a key indicator of expansion potential with corporate customers. In government, Radke forecasts 51% year-on-year growth in 2026—about 8 percentage points above consensus—with a bullish upside scenario of 70%+ as defense budgets expand and modernization urgency rises globally, helped further when the U.S. laps the disruption from a 2025 government shutdown. He flags big defense programs, including initiatives like Golden Dome, as potential catalysts for sentiment even if their full financial impact may be more visible in 2027 and beyond. Radke admits the valuation is rich—his target implies roughly 68x 2027 EV/Sales on his base case—but argues it is broadly in line with high-growth peers like Snowflake and MongoDB once adjusted for Palantir’s growth profile, making the stock, in his view, a high-risk but compelling play on both enterprise AI and defense spending.

Zoom Video Communications is being re-framed as an underappreciated growth and cash-flow story, with Citi’s Tyler Radke upgrading the stock from Neutral/High Risk to Buy and lifting his target price to $106. Radke calls Zoom’s valuation “undemanding,” pointing out that the stock trades at about 10x next-twelve-months enterprise value to free cash flow, a low multiple for a software company with visible catalysts. He believes the narrative is shifting from a pandemic “work-from-home” pure play to a multi-product platform where newer offerings—especially Zoom Contact Center (ZCC) and AI-focused tools—can reignite revenue growth. For 2027, Radke models sustainable 5%+ top-line growth, around two points above the current Street view, and sees ZCC alone contributing 180 basis points of that growth, or roughly 42% of Zoom’s net new revenue that year. His detailed bottom-up work assumes strong year-on-year expansion in ZCC, aided by bigger deal sizes and a healthy pipeline across customer segments, including a rapidly growing mid-market cohort. On the AI side, he argues Zoom is better positioned than many fear, given its control over the video and bandwidth infrastructure layer and its potential to extract and monetize intelligence from the vast volume of meetings it hosts. The new Custom AI Companion, already resonating with Fortune 200 clients, alongside AI-enhanced products like ZCC Elite, Zoom Virtual Agent and Zoom Revenue Accelerator, could add about 70 basis points of revenue growth in 2027 and serve as a key sentiment catalyst if management bakes AI into formal guidance. With buybacks supporting earnings per share and operating margins expected to remain largely stable, Radke trims his previous valuation discount and now values Zoom at 14x 2027 free cash flow, arguing that a clearer growth story plus AI monetization could help rerate a stock many investors still associate with post-pandemic stagnation.

Enphase Energy, by contrast, is getting a more cautious reception as Raymond James analyst Bobby Zolper resumes coverage with a Market Perform (Hold) rating, reflecting both the company’s quality and the heavy headwinds facing the residential solar industry. Zolper acknowledges Enphase as a high-caliber business: it enjoys strong customer loyalty, holds a dominant share in its niche, and has historically defended premium pricing and record gross margins even through a sharp post-COVID sales downturn. But he stresses that Enphase operates in a market heavily shaped by external forces—government subsidies, utility-controlled net metering rules, volatile financing costs, and a tightening domestic policy framework—all of which have recently moved against the sector. With the stock roughly 90% off its highs and widely out of favor on the sell side, he is tempted to be contrarian but ultimately concludes that the shares look fairly valued given the cyclical and policy risks. Zolper sketches out a choppy demand path tied to expiring tax credits: he sees 2026 volumes potentially falling 20–30% in line with guidance, as the market digests the phaseout of the 25D credit and unwinds a 2025 pull-forward, followed by a likely 2027 rebound ahead of the 48E phaseout, and then another reset in 2028. This pattern suggests a recurring boom-bust cycle rather than clean, structural growth. Meanwhile, the installer landscape is consolidating in favor of large third-party owners who wield purchasing leverage, scale in operations and maintenance, and the ability to keep inventory of string inverters—all factors that could erode Enphase’s historical pricing power. Still, he points to underappreciated positives: Enphase’s favored status on third-party ownership vendor lists, rising battery attach rates as those TPOs gain share, expanding benefits from 45X manufacturing credits on onshored battery production, room for substantial operating expense cuts, and a likely uplift to GAAP EPS as lower stock-based compensation flows through in later years. Even so, his earnings outlook—GAAP EPS of $1.18 in 2025, $0.55 in 2026, and $1.06 in 2027—supports a view that while Enphase is resilient, it may be trapped in an industry where policy cycles and shifting market structure cap the upside for now.

First Solar is also restarting coverage at Raymond James with a Market Perform (Hold) rating, as Bobby Zolper sees a strong fundamental story but limited fresh angles for investors after a big run in the shares. He notes that First Solar has already rallied more than 100% from its lows and has become something of a consensus long among sell-side analysts. From a business standpoint, he is broadly positive: First Solar is a clear winner from U.S. protectionist policies, benefiting on volumes because imported modules face steep tariffs, on prices because “foreign entity of concern” rules effectively restrict compliant capacity to a relatively small domestic group, and on margins thanks to large—and growing—45X manufacturing credits. The company enjoys a near-record backlog that stretches toward the end of the decade, alongside a huge “early stage” pipeline that should begin to convert into firm orders as final tax and sourcing rules are clarified, and it holds a large trove of deferred revenue that suggests stronger shipment activity ahead. Tight supply for alternative generation sources, especially as data centers and AI-related electricity demand surge, further enhances the appeal of utility-scale and co-located solar, with Zolper pointing to Alphabet’s purchase of developer and major First Solar customer Intersect Power as evidence of this trend. Yet despite what he calls an “optically inexpensive” valuation—about 10.5x 2026 earnings and a 5–6% 2026 free cash flow yield—he sees real risks: a meaningful chunk of current profit and cash flow comes from time-limited 45X credits; backlog has been shrinking for roughly two years; mid- to late-stage pipeline opportunities continue to fall; and net bookings have been minimal or negative across several quarters, punctuated by a sizable customer cancellation in the third quarter. Looking ahead, he worries that as more module manufacturing is onshored and demand-side incentives like the ITC and PTC roll off, the industry could shift into overcapacity, pressuring utilization and pricing if today’s early-stage pipeline does not translate into actual projects. Zolper’s estimates—EPS of $14.69 in 2025 and $22.72 in 2026—reflect a still-healthy earnings outlook, but his rating signals that, for now, he prefers to watch from the sidelines rather than chase a story where much of the bullish narrative may already be priced in.