By George Glover
Software stocks have taken a beating lately -- but Veeva Systems looks well-placed to weather the market's fears about artificial-intelligence disruption.
Shares in the life sciences cloud solutions provider jumped 11% to $209.02 ahead of Thursday's opening bell. Futures tracking the S&P 500 were 0.4% lower after Iran denied reaching out to the U.S. to set up peace talks.
Veeva late Wednesday topped Wall Street's earnings and revenue forecasts for the fiscal fourth quarter and issued strong billings guidance. The company also said that 10 of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies had committed to its Vault customer relationship management platform.
The results could help ease fears about AI upending the sofware industry. The release of new coding agents, particularly those from OpenAI and Anthropic, has triggered a brutal selloff for the sector.
Veeva itself has struggled, with shares down 16% in 2026.
"These results should help support valuation given the software selloff over the last few weeks, particularly given the healthy billings guidance," KeyBanc analyst Scott Schoenhaus said, noting that revenue guidance came in slightly above expectations.
Schoenhaus rates the stock at Sector Weight.
For the quarter ended Jan. 31, Veeva reported adjusted earnings of $2.06 a share, as revenue climbed 16% from a year ago to $836 million. Analysts were expecting earnings of $1.94 a share on revenue of $811 million, according to a FactSet poll.
For the current quarter, the company is expecting earnings of $2.13 to $2.14 a share and revenue of between $855 and $858 million. Both figures topped expectations: Wall Street was looking for earnings of $2.10 a share and revenue of $853 million.
Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com
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March 05, 2026 05:45 ET (10:45 GMT)
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