Here's Why Tableau (DATA) Stock Popped Today

Tableau Software’s (NYSE:DATA) stock gained 4.05% in Tuesday morning trading after the data visualization and analytics company earned a big analyst upgrade.

Goldman Sachs’s (NYSE:GS) analyst Jesse Hulsing raised Tableau stock from a “Neutral” rating to a “Buy.” Along with the substantial sign of faith in the software maker, Hulsing set Tableau’s price target at $78 per share, which is well above its current $62.66 price point and nearly $12 above its 52-week high.

The analyst also projects Tableau’s revenues to jump to $1.2 billion by the second quarter of 2020—a massive gain from the $199.9 million it reported in the first quarter of this year.

Goldman’s note backed up this revenue forecast, citing that there are tens of millions of workers who have yet to move on to a “modern” form of “business intelligence.” This would allow Tableau the ability to expand its business for years to come.

Interestingly, Tableau’s own data supports the analyst’s claims. According to Tableau’s website, by “2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as in 2011 and 75 times the number of information sources.”

Today’s Tableau upgrade and boost in share price comes only a week after Bernstein marked Tableau as its most likely “Outperformer” in the Mid-Cap Software Space and set a price target of $79.

“We believe revenue deceleration was largely due to temporary growing pains, which have been corrected, and the market underappreciates the strength of Tableau's products and ecosystem,” Bernstein analyst Zane Chrane said. “Tableau has superior functionality, usability, and business benefits when compared to competitors' solutions by end users and line-of-business leaders.”

The analyst touched on the fact that Tableau's relatively new CEO Adam Selipsky’s plans to move towards a more aggressive growth model, which includes an increase in software subscriptions. Selipsky worked at Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) for roughly 10 years, during which he reportedly helped grow Amazon Web Services into the cloud computing power it is today.

e Seattle-based company also scored an “A” for Growth in our Zacks Style Score system but it is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Zacks projects Tableau will report its second quarter earnings on August 1.

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