Morgan Stanley Upgrades Datadog and Appian to Overweight with Price Targets of $180 and $45
Written by Emily J. Thompson, Senior Investment Analyst
Updated: Jan 12 2026
0mins
Should l Buy APPN?
Source: seekingalpha
- Datadog Growth Potential: Morgan Stanley upgraded Datadog from Equal-weight to Overweight, believing that despite potential headwinds from OpenAI, the company will benefit from several underlying growth trends driven by public cloud growth and digital transformation initiatives.
- New Product Contributions: Analysts noted that Datadog's newer product categories, including cloud security, database monitoring, and incident response, are starting to contribute meaningfully to growth, providing new vectors for success in its core business.
- Attractive Valuation for Appian: Morgan Stanley upgraded Appian to Overweight, citing its key positioning in workflow automation and AI market, particularly with early customer adoption of AI-related subscription tiers resulting in a 25% pricing uplift.
- Future Growth Expectations: Analysts expect Appian to sustain at least mid-teens growth in 2026 and beyond, especially with strong growth in the U.S. Federal market, which accounts for approximately 25% of total revenue, significantly enhancing sales productivity and exceeding market consensus.
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Analyst Views on APPN
Wall Street analysts forecast APPN stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for APPN is 40.33 USD with a low forecast of 34.00 USD and a high forecast of 48.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.
7 Analyst Rating
2 Buy
3 Hold
2 Sell
Hold
Current: 24.890
Low
34.00
Averages
40.33
High
48.00
Current: 24.890
Low
34.00
Averages
40.33
High
48.00
About APPN
Appian Corporation is a software company that offers platform, which help organizations run better processes that reduce costs, and improve customer experiences. The Company’s Appian platform is an integrated automation platform for process orchestration, automation, and intelligence. The platform provides everything an organization needs to design, automate, and optimize critical processes. Its capabilities include data fabric, robotic process automation (RPA); intelligent document processing (IDP); generative artificial intelligence (AI); AI agents; low-code design; application programming interfaces (APIs); and process intelligence capabilities in a single platform. Its data fabric is an integrated data layer that unifies data across systems without requiring companies to migrate their data. Its patented data fabric technology supports both analytical and transactional workloads, which allows users to build applications that create and update enterprise data.
About the author
Emily J. Thompson
Emily J. Thompson, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with 12 years in investment research, graduated with honors from the Wharton School. Specializing in industrial and technology stocks, she provides in-depth analysis for Intellectia’s earnings and market brief reports.
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- Industry Leader: As the Co-Founder and CEO of ScienceLogic, Link's expertise in unifying service-centric observability with intelligent automation will provide Appian with valuable industry insights and innovative thinking.
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- New Product Contributions: Analysts noted that Datadog's newer product categories, including cloud security, database monitoring, and incident response, are starting to contribute meaningfully to growth, providing new vectors for success in its core business.
- Attractive Valuation for Appian: Morgan Stanley upgraded Appian to Overweight, citing its key positioning in workflow automation and AI market, particularly with early customer adoption of AI-related subscription tiers resulting in a 25% pricing uplift.
- Future Growth Expectations: Analysts expect Appian to sustain at least mid-teens growth in 2026 and beyond, especially with strong growth in the U.S. Federal market, which accounts for approximately 25% of total revenue, significantly enhancing sales productivity and exceeding market consensus.
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- New Board Member: Appian announced the appointment of David Link to its Board of Directors effective January 25, 2026, leveraging his extensive experience in AI-driven IT operations to enhance the company's strategic development in intelligent automation.
- Industry Leader Background: As the Co-Founder and CEO of ScienceLogic, Link possesses deep expertise in developing IT management and automation tools, which is expected to help Appian further enhance its product competitiveness in the market.
- Patents and Achievements: Link holds over 12 technology patents in the IT management field and was named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year for the Mid-Atlantic region, showcasing his exceptional capabilities in technological innovation and business growth.
- Extensive Industry Experience: Prior to founding ScienceLogic, Link held senior positions at Interliant and IBM, where he led the development of Internet commerce software products, further strengthening his leadership in technology and business transformation.
See More
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- New Board Member: Appian announced the appointment of David Link to its Board of Directors effective January 25, 2026, whose extensive experience in AI-driven IT operations is expected to enhance the company's technological strategy and market competitiveness.
- Industry Leader: As the Co-Founder and CEO of ScienceLogic, Link's expertise in unifying service-centric observability with intelligent automation will provide Appian with valuable industry insights and innovative thinking.
- Technical Expertise: Link's proficiency in scaling enterprise software platforms and applying AI and automation to complex globally distributed systems is anticipated to help Appian improve its product market adaptability and customer satisfaction.
- Rich Background: Prior to founding ScienceLogic, Link held senior roles at Interliant and IBM, accumulating deep technical management experience and holding over 12 technology patents in IT management, further enhancing his strategic value to Appian.
See More
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- Datadog Growth Potential: Morgan Stanley upgraded Datadog from Equal-weight to Overweight, believing that despite potential headwinds from OpenAI, the company will benefit from several underlying growth trends driven by public cloud growth and digital transformation initiatives.
- New Product Contributions: Analysts noted that Datadog's newer product categories, including cloud security, database monitoring, and incident response, are starting to contribute meaningfully to growth, providing new vectors for success in its core business.
- Attractive Valuation for Appian: Morgan Stanley upgraded Appian to Overweight, citing its key positioning in workflow automation and AI market, particularly with early customer adoption of AI-related subscription tiers resulting in a 25% pricing uplift.
- Future Growth Expectations: Analysts expect Appian to sustain at least mid-teens growth in 2026 and beyond, especially with strong growth in the U.S. Federal market, which accounts for approximately 25% of total revenue, significantly enhancing sales productivity and exceeding market consensus.
See More
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- Strong Growth Trends: Morgan Stanley upgraded Datadog from Equal Weight to Overweight, citing the return of digital transformation and cloud migration as key drivers for accelerating core growth expected to sustain through 2027, highlighting the company's competitive edge in the rapidly evolving cloud services market.
- Attractive Valuation: Wells Fargo upgraded ConocoPhillips to Overweight with a price target raised to $132, primarily based on an increase in dividend growth assumptions, reflecting the company's compelling valuation appeal within the oil and gas sector.
- Investment Opportunity: Bernstein upgraded Liberty Formula One to Outperform, advising investors to buy the dip, as favorable deal-making is anticipated to drive upward revisions in earnings estimates, showcasing the company's potential growth avenues in the market.
- Cloud Infrastructure Transformation: Morgan Stanley upgraded Akamai to Overweight, noting that its evolution from a content delivery provider to a cloud infrastructure and security platform is approaching an inflection point, underscoring the strategic significance of the company's technological advancements.
See More
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- Software Sector Rising: Palantir has seen revenue and operating margin improvements in nearly every quarter since 2023, thanks to the launch of its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which is expected to further drive success in the software industry within the AI space.
- OpenAI Revenue Surge: OpenAI is projected to achieve an annual run rate exceeding $20 billion by year-end, while Anthropic targets $9 billion, nearly tripling from the previous year, highlighting robust demand in the AI software market.
- Chip Stocks' Clear Advantage: With demand for AI chips outstripping supply, semiconductor manufacturers are positioned favorably within the AI ecosystem, and this trend is expected to widen the gap over infrastructure stocks by 2026.
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