Cramer is not willing to bet against ServiceNow after KeyBanc’s sell call
CNBC’s Jim Cramer says KeyBanc’s sell call on ServiceNow stock is a “radical move.” KeyBanc analyst Jackson Ader downgraded ServiceNow to an underweight sell from a hold-equivalent sector weight. Ader established a $775 price target, which was right around where shares were trading Monday after dropping more than 11%. “This is one of the most controversial calls I’ve ever seen,” Jim Cramer said on ” Squawk on the Street ,” adding it is a challenge to ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. With all-due respect to Ader’s high-quality work, “I can never count Bill McDermott out like this.” “ServiceNow’s own AI products include a hybrid monetization structure that should mitigate some of the headwinds that would come from seat-count pressure, but this has not kept other software as a service (SaaS) sub-sectors afloat when this narrative has come for them,” Ader wrote in a note to clients Sunday. This “AI is eating software” narrative, first introduced by Melius Research back in August, has particularly challenged Investing Club holding Salesforce , which has had a difficult time convincing investors that its Agentic AI platform, Agentforce, is not going to hurt its per-seat core business of customer relationship management software. Agentic AIs, like Agentforce, help clients automate problem-solving functions that previously could only be done by humans and lower head count. However, this dynamic is seen as a detriment to the SaaS model because fewer employees at client companies means fewer software licences are needed. In a “Mad Money” interview earlier this month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Cramer that AI is a “commodity feature” that bolsters enterprise software. Following a bold move into AI-powered customer relationship management software earlier this year to take on Salesforce , ServiceNow is now facing the same hurdles in its core business, which helps IT departments manage devices and workflows. “There are signals in the IT back-office employment data that raise the likelihood that the ‘Death of SaaS’ narrative could come for ServiceNow in 2026,” Ader wrote. While ServiceNow’s stock has dropped roughly 27% for the year, Jim reiterated that he’s still not willing to bet against McDermott.
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