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NICE Gains 11% in 3 Months: Should You Buy, Sell or Hold the Stock?

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NICE’s (NICE - Free Report) shares have gained 10.9% over the past three months, outperforming the Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s return of 10.2%.

The rise in share price can be attributed to robust growth in the cloud business, which accounted for 72.5% of total revenues and saw 24% year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2024.
 
The widespread adoption of AI solutions, including the successful launch of products such as Autopilot and Copilot, coupled with significant wins in major enterprise deals, played an important role in driving this upward momentum.

However, slowing growth in the Financial Crime and Compliance segment, coupled with a 12% decline in the APAC region, poses challenges. Intense competition in the cloud and customer engagement segments has been a headwind.

Nice Price and Consensus

Nice Price and Consensus

Nice price-consensus-chart | Nice Quote

NICE Rides on Strong Q3 Results

NICE reported total revenues of $690 million, up 15% year over year, with cloud revenues contributing $500 million, marking a 24% increase.

Annual recurring revenues from cloud services surpassed $2 billion, indicating significant growth potential driven by the increasing demand for scalable, flexible and innovative cloud solutions.

Customer engagement revenues grew 16% year over year, led by the success of CXone, especially its AI-powered solutions, which gained traction across various industries.

Revenues from financial crime and compliance grew 8% year over year, driven primarily by an increase in cloud revenues and the sale of its X-Sight and Xceed cloud platforms across global financial institutions.

Robust Portfolio and Customer Base Boost NICE’s Prospects

NICE is enhancing customer experiences by concentrating on four primary strategic pillars: Digital, Analytics, Cloud and AI & Automation. These areas collectively drive the company's growth and technological advancements.

NICE's partner ecosystem has grown significantly in 2024, with more than 40 new partners, including 20 international ones, joining to support its leading CXone platform, demonstrating its strong industry leadership and success.

NICE has introduced CXone Mpower, a powerful platform built to fully automate customer service. It allows businesses to design, manage and optimize their entire service structure. This innovation is part of NICE's mission to lead customer service automation with precision and scale.

The surge in AI solution adoption, particularly the success of new products like Autopilot and Copilot, has been a significant driver in NICE's recent performance. These AI-powered solutions have played a key role in enhancing customer engagement and streamlining service automation.

In the third quarter of 2024, NICE experienced a remarkable six-fold increase in the annual contract value of its CXone Copilot, highlighting the rising demand for AI-driven customer service solutions.

Rich Partner Base Aids NICE’s Prospects

Prosper, a financial services firm, recently selected NICE as its partner for customer experience (CX) transformation. Through this collaboration, the company will enable Prosper to manage its customer base.

NICE Actimize announced that Sweden’s TF Bank has chosen its AI-driven AML Essentials solutions to bolster financial crime prevention and improve compliance efficiency.

AUSIEX has implemented the NICE CXone cloud-native platform, resulting in a 33% increase in customer engagement and improved operational capabilities.

NICE serves a loyal customer base of more than 25,000 organizations across 150 countries and a wide range of industries. Notably, it includes 85 of the Fortune 100 companies, reflecting its strong presence among leading global enterprises.

NICE Offers Positive FY24 Guidance

For 2024, NICE projects non-GAAP revenues to be between $2.715 billion and $2.735 billion, indicating 15% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.

Non-GAAP earnings are estimated to be in the band of $10.95-$11.5 per share, implying 26% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues is pegged at $2.73 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 14.69%.

The consensus mark for 2025 earnings is pegged at $11.05 per share, implying 25.71% year-over-year growth.

NICE’s Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

NICE currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which implies investors should wait for a favorable point to accumulate the stock.

Five9 (FIVN - Free Report) , BILL Holdings, Inc. (BILL - Free Report) and BWX Technologies (BWXT - Free Report) are some better-ranked stocks in the broader tech sector. Each of the stocks currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The long-term earnings growth rates for FIVN, BILL and BWXT are pegged at 15.60%, 13.41% and 9.23%, respectively.


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