Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index Bolstered by SAP Acquisition News

The Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index is up again for the week ending Dec. 9, 2011, with a solid 6.93 percent boost, bringing the 20 SaaS and cloud companies we track to an overall 23.06 percent gain since Jan. 1. It won’t surprise anyone that SAP’s $3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors pushed it to the head of the pack, but it made sure to bring some cloud colleagues with it to the top of the pile.

But before our closer look, you know the drill, and we have to go over our standard warnings: We only maintain the Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index to match cloud hype against real-world performance. We don’t offer specific financial advice, and whether you buy, sell or hold is up to you and you alone.

You already knew that SuccessFactors (SFSF) was the biggest weekly winner, but the margin by which it took the crown is astounding: The business execution software vendor shot up no less than 51.89 percent to $39.87 per share after the SAP acquisition.

In second place was talent management SaaS specialist Taleo (TLEO), which rode this week’s wave of renewed cloud confidence to $42.24 per share, a gain of 28.16 percent.

Finally, way back in third place with a 13.46 percent rise to $53.20 per share was employee spend management cloud developer Concur Technologies (CNQR), apparently another unintended beneficiary of SAP’s cloud imperialism.

It’s a good week when the third-highest week-over-week improvement is 13.5 percent. In fact, the only company on the Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index to post a loss over half a percent at all was Amazon.com, and since that drop was unrelated to anything cloud, I won’t go over it here. The important thing is this: After a bumpy third quarter, the home stretch for 2011 is seriously looking up.

Oh, one more thing: Needless to say, much like recently acquired RightNow Technologies, we’re going to have to find a replacement on the index for SuccessFactors in 2012. Stay tuned for updates on that front.