VMware rises despite Monness, Crespi, Hardt cutting PT, citing geopolitical landscape
VMware (NYSE:VMW) shares rose early on Thursday even as investment firm Monness, Crespi, Hardt cut its price target on the cloud computing company, noting a "daunting" geopolitical landscape and the potential for a recession.




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Analyst Brian White, who rates VMware (VMW) shares buy, lowered his per-share price target to $136 from $153. While the company has a lot of positive drivers going for it, it's not immune to broader issues. 
"We believe VMware offers a unique value proposition in the cloud, carries a modest stock valuation, and enjoys attractive profitability; however, the geopolitical landscape is daunting, the economy flirting with a recession, and the tech tantrum has morphed into a tech apocalypse," White said in a note, adding multiple contraction as the reason for the lower price target.
VMware (VMW) shares rose nearly 1% to $94.41 in early trading on Thursday.
The price target comes ahead of VMware's (VMW) first-quarter earnings report, slated to happen later this month. White noted that the quarter is usually the "seasonally weakest" of the year and the firm is expecting revenue to rise 6.5% year-over-year, but down 10% sequentially.
VMware (VMW) is likely to keep moving along with its subscription and software-as-a-service offerings, with revenue from these metrics combined to rise an estimated 23% year-over-year to $911.4 million, while licensing revenue is expected to dip 0.3% to $643.8 million and services revenue to rise just 2% to $1.63 billion. 
Although VMWare (VMW) has said in the past that the next 20 years will focus on a multi-cloud approach, having recently partnered with public clouds, including Alibaba (BABA), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN) and others, White expects the company to strike a "cautious tone" when it gives guidance. 
Earlier this month, VMware (VMW) and Wipro (WIT) expanded their collaboration to keep boosting their customers' digital transformation.