NOW
AI angst, meet the reality check
ServiceNow got a much-needed bounce Monday, climbing more than 6% after Bernstein told the market not to freak out about AI agents stealing its core business. The firm kept its Outperform rating and $219 price target, arguing that the stuff ServiceNow does — reliability, security, strict controls — is exactly the kind of boring-but-critical plumbing big companies don’t want to hand over to a chatbot.
Why that matters
That’s the whole investment debate in a nutshell. If you think AI is a wrecking ball, ServiceNow looks vulnerable. If you think AI is more like a power tool layered on top of existing workflows, ServiceNow starts to look like one of the better enterprise software moats on the block.
A few extra wrinkles:
- Bernstein says large companies are unlikely to bet everything on one AI provider.
- The note pushed back on fears that tools from names like Anthropic could simply swap out ServiceNow’s automation platform.
- Shares had been under pressure, so even a reassuring note was enough to give the stock a little caffeine shot.
The RBC cameo
There was also a second analyst move in the mix: RBC Capital Markets trimmed its price target to $121 from $150 but kept an Outperform rating ahead of ServiceNow’s Q1 results on April 22. So yes, the analysts are still basically believers — they just disagree on how expensive the faith should be.
Big picture: this is less “AI kills ServiceNow” and more “AI changes the pitch deck.” Investors now get to watch whether the company can prove its platform is the kind of mission-critical software that survives every hype cycle unbothered.