New York, Jan 12, 2026, 20:16 EST — The market has closed.
ServiceNow shares rose 0.6% to $142.64 in late Monday trading. Goldman Sachs kicked off coverage with a Buy rating and set a $205 price target — that’s the analyst’s forecast for where the stock might trade over the next year. 1
The timing is crucial as big-cap software stocks have been tossed around by shifting rate expectations and renewed “show me” skepticism before earnings. Traders pricing in prolonged higher rates usually discount high-growth names, given their cash flows are projected further into the future.
The rate outlook changed once more after banks like Goldman and Barclays pushed expected U.S. rate cuts out to mid-to-late 2026, reacting to recent labor-market figures. Traders now see a 95% probability the Fed will keep rates unchanged at its January meeting, according to CME FedWatch. 2
U.S. stocks hit record highs on Monday as traders turned their focus to Tuesday’s consumer price index data and the kickoff of quarterly earnings from major banks. “Investors also are looking ahead to the fourth-quarter U.S. earnings season,” noted Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities. 3
ServiceNow provides software that streamlines and automates internal company tasks — IT service tickets, employee onboarding, security workflows — mostly through subscriptions. Bulls argue this same infrastructure can handle workflows for AI tools, not just human users.
Goldman, taking a wider view on software, flagged AI adoption as a “positive tailwind” for the sector’s addressable market in the decade ahead. It singled out ServiceNow as well-positioned in “agent orchestration,” a term for software that manages multiple AI agents or bots across varied systems. 4
That moves ServiceNow into well-trodden battlegrounds. Its push into customer and employee workflows pits it against Salesforce, Oracle, and Workday—occasionally competing directly, other times positioning itself as an overlay.
But here’s the rub. Should Tuesday’s inflation figures surprise on the upside and drive yields higher, software multiples could shrink quickly—and “initiations” won’t prevent that. A $205 target looks very different when the market is revaluing growth.
Tuesday’s session raises a key question: will the note spark genuine buying, or merely steady the stock following a rocky start to the year? Early volume will be the tell—these calls typically show up there first.
The real challenge arrives later this month, when investors dig into ServiceNow’s outlook and demand indicators — with a sharp focus on any news about new AI products — searching for clues that spending remains steady.
ServiceNow announced it will release its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings after markets close on Wednesday, Jan. 28, with a conference call scheduled for 2 p.m. Pacific. 5
