Strength in CRM: Roth Boosts Targets on Salesforce.com and RightNow

Nathan Schneiderman, an analyst with Roth Capital Partners, raised his price targets on both Salesforce.com (CRM) and RightNow (RNOW), both companies which play in the market for customer relationship management software.

Salesforce’s “momentum appears unstoppable,” he says. He sees a near-term catalyst in the the company’s user conference October 8-11 in San Francisco. “A key longer term positive is a strong and improving competitive position that is made even stronger by the company’s embrace of multi-tenancy and its AppsExchange initiative, both of which facilitate rapid innovation.” He raised his target on the stock to $43 from $40.

For RightNow, Schneiderman increased his profit forecast for the full year to 8 cents a share from 6 cents. He also notes that his third quarter revenue estimate of $29.5 million is about $1 million above the consensus view; his profit forecast of four cents a share is two pennie above consensus. Schneiderman says he has been “genuinely impressed” with the reaction to the the new Version 8 of of its core software. He raised his target on the stock to $20 from $18, and says the company is his top pick in enterprise software.

“The data supports the view that sector demand is healthy for the customer-service segment of CRM,” he writes. “Virtually every publicly-traded vendors focused on the segment is showing good revenue growth over the past year.