Wednesday, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey initiated coverage of Riverbed Technology, Inc. (RVBD) stock with a Market Perform rating and a price target of $22. The brokerage established its 2009 EPS estimate of $0.60, and its 2010 estimate of $0.74.
Analyst Daniel Ives noted that Riverbed is a leading pure-play vendor in the fertile wide-area data services space, offering organizations a comprehensive solution that broadly addresses the interrelated root causes of poor performance of wide-area distributed computing. The core foundation of Riverbed's product offering are the Steelhead appliances that are powered by the company's proprietary Riverbed Optimization System, or RiOS, software.
The analyst said that RiOS enables enterprises to improve the performance of their applications and access to their data across wide-area networks, or WANs, while simultaneously offering customers the ability to realize capital and operating cost savings by simplifying IT infrastructures.
Although Riverbed is the clear technological leader in the space, in the analyst's opinion, and claims to own a dominating ~90% win rate versus its competitors, he believes the battle for market share is heating up in the field; coupled with the difficult spending environment, this could limit near-term growth prospects on the name.
The analyst is positive on the overall WAN application delivery market and believes Riverbed is firmly positioned to benefit from these market dynamics over the coming years, but he encourages investors to watch this name from the sidelines until he gets further comfort in the company's ability to navigate through these near-term spending headwinds.
Currently, RVBD is up $1.01 or 4.32% and trading at $24.37.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.