Software Stocks Surge on Earnings While Hardware Gets Crushed — What's the Divide?
Software ran while hardware broke. CrowdStrike +11% on $1.47bn revenue, Salesforce +12% on $11.3bn, Okta +20%; reports that Silver Lake is in talks to buy Workday lifted the group further. HP fell 8.98% after hours despite a higher session. The dividing line is the bill of materials: subscriptions carry no exposure to memory and NAND prices — the same input Nvidia cited that evening when guiding margins down to 71–72%. Chase Salesforce and Okta, bet on the Silver Lake deal, or wait for hardware to pass its costs through?