2H Outlook & Top Picks: Glimmers Of Hope But Software Still Guilty Until Proven

Research evidence excerpt

2H Outlook & Top Picks: Glimmers Of Hope But Software Still Guilty Until Proven

Technology | Software

July 06, 2026

Kirk Materne, CFA Peter Levine Peter Burkly Bill McNamara

212 497 0873 212 497 0833 212 497 0831 212 446 5626

kirk.materne@evercoreisi.com peter.levine@evercoreisi.com peter.burkly@evercoreisi.com bill.mcnamara@evercoreisi.com

Charlie Zhou Vinod Srinivasaraghavan, CFA

646-551-8513 646-551-8831

charlie.zhou@evercoreisi.com Vinod.Srinivas@evercoreisi.com

2H Outlook & Top Picks: Glimmers Of Hope But Software Still Guilty Until

Proven Durable

Rough start to 2026. While it was a tough start to 2026 at a sector level with the IGV being down -11% vs. the S&P 500 (+9%)

there were some pockets of strength in ‘scaffolding’ names in 1H offset by material underperformance from application names –

across all market caps. As discussed back in February, we felt that the infrastructure and security names would be the first software

names to rally if/when the AI smoke cleared. But what we did not expect was the magnitude of additional underperformance from

some of the larger apps names, which had already underperformed in 2025 (i.e. the bar was already lower heading into 2026).

Ironically, over the past few weeks, we believe the discussion about model flexibility and model pricing helps support our argument

that there will be an opportunity for some larger enterprise software companies to ultimately become agent orchestration platforms

(see our Guilty Until Proven Durable compendium here). Our most recent CIO/CTO survey also supports a more balanced view on

AI adoption in the enterprise (i.e. it’s a multi-model world). The challenge is that the adoption of agentic platforms in the enterprise

remains in the very early innings.