What Happened?
Shares of low-code automation software company Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA) jumped 7.7% in the afternoon session after Barclays upgraded its rating on the stock to "Overweight" from "Equal-Weight."
The brokerage noted that a recent sell-off in software stocks had created a buying opportunity. Barclays said Pegasystems had posted stronger cloud growth and built momentum around its artificial intelligence offerings. The bank also argued that the company's business was less exposed to the broad concerns about the impact of generative AI on established software companies. In its upgrade, Barclays set a price target of $48 on the stock.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
Pegasystems’s shares are quite volatile and have had 19 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 4 days ago when the stock gained 5.5% on the news that analysts suggested that the recent "SaaSpocalypse" sell-off had pushed valuations into deeply oversold territory, sparking a wave of opportunistic buying. While the sector had been hammered in early 2026 by fears that autonomous AI agents would replace traditional seat-based subscriptions, institutional investors began rotating back into "sticky" incumbents. This shift was fueled by a Barclays report arguing that corporate transitions away from legacy systems take years, not weeks, providing a protective moat for established providers in compliance and governance.
Pegasystems is down 21.9% since the beginning of the year, and at $43.76 per share, it is trading 34.3% below its 52-week high of $66.64 from October 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Pegasystems’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $599.42.
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