Software Mortal Kombat
Choose Your Fighter - ZS, INTU, PANW, NOW, TEAM, CRM, ZETA, MSFT
Hunting for Asymmetric Upside in Oversold Software
The last few weeks have been a full‑on sentiment reset for growth and software. AI “disruption” headlines, tariff chatter, and a sharp factor rotation have taken a flamethrower to anything with a recurring revenue line and a premium multiple.
That’s exactly the environment where it pays to separate broken stories from broken prices.
I’ve been working through a basket of high‑quality software names that have been taken to the woodshed and asking a simple question: where is the risk‑reward skewed most favorably for upside into March and beyond?
Below is a quick run‑through of the main names on my board—INTU, PANW, NOW, TEAM, CRM, ZS, S, ZETA, MSFT—with an eye toward:
Structural bull vs. bear cases
Where we are in the sentiment / positioning cycle
Whether short‑dated upside calls into March make sense versus longer‑dated exposure
Intuit (INTU): Defensive AI Fintech on Sale
Intuit at roughly 360 is a high‑quality, AI‑native fintech platform (QuickBooks, TurboTax, Credit Karma, Mailchimp) that’s been taken out back and shot, down more than 30% year‑to‑date and sitting at fresh 52‑week lows.
Fundamentally, that de‑rating looks disconnected from the actual business.
Q1 FY26 revenue grew 18–21% year‑over‑year to about 3.9 billion dollars, with non‑GAAP EPS of 3.34 versus 3.09 expected.
Management is guiding ~16% revenue growth for FY26, with non‑GAAP operating margins in the low‑30s, helped by AI‑driven efficiencies across the product set.
The balance sheet is clean (roughly 3.7 billion dollars in cash vs. 6.1 billion in debt) and they’re returning capital via buybacks and a dividend.
The AI story is real, not marketing:
“Intuit Assist” and a growing roster of AI “agents” are embedded across QuickBooks and TurboTax, automating bookkeeping, invoicing, tax prep, and receivables.
Online ecosystem revenue is growing over 20%, mid‑market customer counts are up roughly 40%, and Credit Karma just printed 27% growth.
The bear pushback is mostly about valuation and politics: worries around IRS Direct File, consumer‑finance scrutiny, and Mailchimp competition. Those are real, but at ~5.5x sales and mid‑20s earnings for a 15–20% grower with 30%+ margins, the market has already taken a machete to the multiple.
My take: INTU is the cleanest “high‑quality, oversold” setup in this basket. Heading into tax season with strong seasonality and a big drawdown, short‑dated upside calls (March) or call spreads make sense tactically, with longer‑dated exposure as the core.
Palo Alto Networks (PANW): Platform Leader, Sentiment Wreck
Palo Alto around 144–145 is a premier cyber platform (network, cloud, SecOps) that just printed a solid quarter—and then got absolutely torched.
Q2 FY26 revenue was ~2.6 billion dollars (+15% YoY), with EPS of 1.03 vs. 0.94 expected, 76% gross margin, and over 30% operating margin.
Free cash flow was north of 500 million dollars for the quarter.
The business is doing what it’s supposed to:
Platformization is accelerating, with customers consolidating multiple point products onto PANW’s Strata / Prisma / Cortex stack.
Management is pushing into higher‑margin segments like aerospace, power, and energy, all of which carry better economics than legacy point solutions.
The problem is expectations and AI narrative risk.
Growth has downshifted from prior ~20%+ to 15%, and the market wanted more given the multiple.
AI headlines about cheaper automated security tooling have spooked investors, raising questions (legitimate or not) around longer‑term margin and pricing power.
The stock has been removed from at least one high‑conviction list, sentiment has flipped, and options flow is now skewed bearish.
My take: You almost never get to buy a platform leader with 30%+ margins and durable demand at the low end of its range after a one‑two punch of narrative and guidance angst. PANW fits squarely in the “buy quality after a scare” bucket. I like upside calls or call spreads into March as a mean‑reversion trade, with the fundamental risk well‑defined.
ServiceNow (NOW): AI Workflow Backbone, Re‑Rated Hard
ServiceNow around 100–105 is what happens when a high‑quality compounder gets repriced from perfection to merely “good” in a risk‑off tape.
The numbers are still strong:
Q4 2025 revenue came in around 3.57 billion dollars (+20–21% YoY) with subscription revenue up ~21%.
Current RPO grew about 25% to 12.85 billion dollars, giving solid forward visibility.
Management guided 2026 subscription revenue above consensus and sees low‑20s growth sustained.
The AI angle is straight down the fairway:
NOW is positioning as the AI‑native workflow fabric across IT, employee, customer, and custom apps.
Products like Pro Plus, Now Assist, AI Control Tower, and AI Agent Fabric turn the platform into an orchestration layer for autonomous agents.
Bears will flag decelerating growth and rising M&A (Moveworks, etc.) as yellow flags, plus the fact that the stock still isn’t “cheap” on classic metrics.
My take: NOW sits in the middle of the spectrum. Not as bombed‑out as INTU/PANW, but the combination of 20%+ subscription growth, strong RPO, and AI leverage at ~8x sales is attractive for a measured March upside trade and a core position on weakness.
Atlassian (TEAM): High‑Quality, High‑Duration SaaS in the Line of Fire
Atlassian in the mid‑70s is one of the biggest casualties of the “SaaS‑pocalypse.” The stock is down roughly 70% over the last year and is trading near 52‑week lows.
The actual business is not falling apart:
Q2 FY26 revenue grew 23% YoY to 1.586 billion dollars; cloud revenue crossed 1 billion for the first time, up 26%.
Non‑GAAP EPS was 1.22, almost double consensus, with ~27% non‑GAAP operating margins.
RPO is up ~44% YoY to 3.8 billion dollars, and management is still targeting 20%+ revenue CAGR through FY27.
The issues are FCF optics, SBC, and AI risk in developer tooling:
Free cash flow was down ~50% YoY last quarter due to billing/capex timing, feeding concerns about cash‑generation quality.
GAAP net income is still negative with heavy stock‑based comp.
As AI coding tools automate more of the development workflow, the long‑term “ticket‑per‑person” universe Jira sits on top of may compress at the margin. Atlassian is trying to respond with its own AI layer (Rovo, AI teamwork graph), but that’s still a prove‑it story.
My take: TEAM is a classic high‑beta growth name where the business is fine but the factor exposure is toxic. I’d treat it as a small, long‑duration bet via equity or LEAPs, not a core March call target, given its sensitivity to AI‑in‑dev‑tools narratives.
Salesforce (CRM): AI/Data Cloud Kicker on a Mature Base
Salesforce around the high‑170s is a mature CRM/Data Cloud platform with high‑single/low‑double‑digit revenue growth, mid‑30s margins, and a real AI ARR engine starting to show up in the numbers.
FY25 revenue was 37.9 billion dollars (+9% YoY), with FY26 revenue guided to ~40.5–40.9 billion.
Operating cash flow is ~13 billion dollars per year, up 28% YoY.
Data Cloud and AI ARR has climbed toward 1.4 billion dollars with triple‑digit growth, driven by Agentforce and deeper data integration.
CRM is less “oversold” than some others, and growth is more modest, but you’re paying a mid‑20s P/E for a very sticky base plus an AI/data upside option.
My take: CRM is fine as a core compounder; for tactical upside into March, I’d rank it below INTU, PANW, NOW, and even MSFT. It’s a slower‑moving ship.
Zscaler (ZS), SentinelOne (S), Zeta Global (ZETA): Higher‑Variance Growth
I bucket these three together because the risk profile is very different from the large‑cap compounders.
Zscaler (ZS): Still a premier zero‑trust cloud name, growing just over 20% with strong margins, but trading at ~9x sales and a rich adjusted multiple into a high‑stakes print where a 26% ARR “bar” is widely telegraphed.
SentinelOne (S): Solid #2/#3 endpoint/XDR player, now profitable on a non‑GAAP basis with ~20–25% growth, but smaller scale, heavy competition, and a history of volatility around earnings.
Zeta (ZETA): 20%+ grower in marketing tech with a big TAM, but small cap, rich on some metrics, and highly binary around the print.
My take: all three can absolutely rip, but they’re better expressed as defined‑risk trades (call spreads, tiny lotto calls) than core March upside structures. Risk‑reward is simply less asymmetric than in something like INTU, where the business quality and multiple reset are both working in your favor.
Microsoft (MSFT): AI Platform, Technically Washed Out
Microsoft around the mid‑380s is the cleanest large‑cap AI/cloud duration story in the market.
Q2 FY26 revenue was 81.3 billion dollars, up 17% YoY; cloud revenue topped 50 billion, up 26%.
Azure is still growing high‑30s percent, and commercial RPO sits north of 600 billion dollars, giving monstrous visibility.
The weekly RSI reading in the 20s is about as oversold as MSFT ever gets, and there’s a gap area around 365 that would be a logical first target on any flush and reversal.
At these levels, you’re looking at roughly a 5–10% bounce just to re‑test broken support and gap territory—plenty of room for March upside calls or call spreads to work, especially if the index tape stabilizes.
My take: I like defined‑risk March call spreads (e.g., 390/410) on MSFT as a tactical layer on top of any core or LEAPS exposure. This is a “don’t overthink it” mean‑reversion plus fundamentals setup.
Pulling it together: where I’d actually put March risk
For March 20th upside calls, ranked strictly on risk‑reward of the setup:
INTU – best mix of quality, oversold, near‑term catalyst (earnings + tax season), and AI runway.
PANW – platform leader sold off on narrative; clean post‑panic bounce candidate.
NOW – strong AI workflow story, re‑rated hard; attractive for both tactical and core.
MSFT – structurally elite with extreme oversold technicals; great for defined‑risk call spreads.
CRM – steady compounder; fine for calls, but less asymmetric.
TEAM / ZS / S / ZETA – higher‑beta, more factor and narrative risk; better in small size and defined‑risk structures or as post‑event trades.
In other words: let the market’s AI panic and SaaS‑pocalypse do the heavy lifting on entries. Then selectively lean into high‑quality names where the business is intact, the multiple has reset, and the technical is finally in your favor.
Hope you all enjoyed the write up, cheers!