Back to News
investment

The Great Rotation Has Tech Investors Spooked. I'm Buying This Growth Stock Instead.

newsfeedback@fool.com (Micah Zimmerman)
Loading...
4 min read
0 likes
⚡ Quantum Brief
The "Great Rotation" in early 2026 triggered indiscriminate selling across software stocks, wiping over $2 trillion in sector value as investors fled tech for industrials and "real" assets. Commvault Systems saw its stock plummet 33% on earnings day despite beating estimates, with revenue up 19% YoY and SaaS growth at 44%, as sector-wide panic overshadowed strong fundamentals. The company specializes in cyber resilience, addressing a $24B market growing at 12% annually, driven by rising data volumes, cloud complexity, and sophisticated cyberattacks. Recent partnerships with Okta and NetApp strengthen its ransomware recovery solutions, embedding Commvault deeper into enterprise infrastructure as cyber threats escalate. While AI displacement fears persist, the stock’s 52% drop from highs presents a potential mispricing for a critical cybersecurity player with accelerating recurring revenue.
AI Audio Summary
0:00 / 0:00
Click to play
2205e6bb-8ca1-4235-b162-5b07d4b8a3a2.jpeg
Quantum News · Media Library

By Micah Zimmerman – Apr 4, 2026 at 4:45AM ESTKey PointsThe “Great Rotation” is driving indiscriminate selling across software stocks.Fundamentally strong companies like Commvault Systems are seeing stock prices fall sharply despite accelerating revenue.Commvault’s focus on cyber resilience puts it in a durable, growing market, making the current drawdown an investment opportunity.The investment prognosticators on social media keep talking about what to do when the current market rotation hits your tech portfolio. Sell the giants, they say. Pile into industrials. Find something "real." I've been doing something a little different: I've been looking at the tech stock rubble and at the names that got sold indiscriminately because investors stopped caring about fundamentals and just wanted out of anything that smelled like software. That's how I found the powerful growth stock Commvault Systems (CVLT +2.00%). Image source: Getty Images. A stock that's getting punished for being good Here's the part that genuinely confused me when I dug into Commvault: The company beat estimates. Cleanly. In its fiscal third quarter of 2026 (ended Dec. 31, 2025), it reported total revenue of $314 million, up 19% year over year. This was ahead of its own guidance of $298 million to $300 million. Subscription revenue grew 30% to $206 million. SaaS revenue specifically jumped 44%. It hit $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue ahead of schedule, two full quarters earlier than originally targeted. And the stock dropped 33% on earnings day. The sell-off was driven by software and tech-sector contagion, not by Commvault's actual results. When enterprise software broadly cratered in early 2026 amid fears that AI agents would eat into legacy software revenue, the selling became indiscriminate. More than $2 trillion was wiped from the software sector in a matter of weeks, and Commvault got caught in the flood. As of late March, the stock was down more than 52% from its highs -- trading near its 52-week low of $76.79 -- despite four consecutive quarters of beating revenue estimates. ExpandNASDAQ: CVLTCommvault SystemsToday's Change(2.00%) $1.57Current Price$79.98Key Data PointsMarket Cap$3.5BDay's Range$76.55 - $80.2352wk Range$74.94 - $200.68Volume18KAvg Vol1.1MGross Margin80.55% Why the company is solid The thing I keep coming back to is that Commvault isn't a software-for-software's-sake company. It protects data. It recovers businesses from ransomware attacks. It secures enterprise identities in hybrid cloud environments. The company estimates its total addressable market at $24 billion today, growing at a 12% compound annual rate to $38 billion by 2028 -- driven by the exact trends that nobody thinks are slowing down: more data, more cloud complexity, more sophisticated cyberattacks. Its latest moves reflect that positioning. The company recently expanded its Identity Resilience portfolio to support Okta, allowing enterprises to fully recover their Okta environments after a breach or disruption. It also struck a strategic alliance with NetApp to combine Commvault's cyber recovery capabilities with NetApp's storage infrastructure, creating an integrated solution for enterprise ransomware defense and recovery. These are platform extensions that make Commvault harder to rip out and easier to grow with. The risk is real here I'm not pretending this is a no-brainer growth stock. Commvault is trading at its lowest levels in years, which means someone is still selling. The fear around AI agents displacing legacy software spend is legitimate, even if it doesn't neatly apply to Commvault, and the company still has work to do in converting its remaining maintenance customers to subscription. But here's where I land: When a company grows 22%, beats estimates, and the stock drops 33%, that's the market mispricing, not punishing.

The Great Rotation is real. I'm just not letting it convince me to sell a cyber resilience platform that enterprises genuinely can't afford to live without.Read NextMar 22, 2026 •By Jonathan PoncianoThis $19.8 Million Bet on Commvault Comes Amid a 51% Drop. Here’s What Investors Should KnowApr 4, 2026 •By Jason Hall1 Reason I'm Never Selling Alphabet StockApr 4, 2026 •By Will HealyI've Changed My Mind on This Beaten-Down Growth Stock. The AI Supercycle Bears Got It Wrong.Apr 4, 2026 •By Adam SpataccoIs Micron the New Nvidia?Apr 4, 2026 •By Geoffrey SeilerShould You Forget Sandisk and Buy These 2 AI Stocks While They're Cheap?Stocks MentionedCommvault SystemsNASDAQ: CVLT$79.98(+2.00%)+$1.57*Average returns of all recommendations since inception. Cost basis and return based on previous market day close.

Read Original

Source Information

Source: The Motley Fool

Discussion

0 professional contributions

Sign in to join this professional discussion.

Be the first to add a constructive contribution.