More than 80% of Fortune 100 companies use Apache Kafka, an open-source distributed event streaming platform used to connect applications and services. Kafka is a complicated piece of software. Confluent (NASDAQ: CFLT), co-founded by the co-creators of Kafka, offers a managed Kafka platform that is quickly being adopted by large enterprises.

Confluent stock has been hammered since peaking in late 2021, but an analyst at Mizuho sees brighter days ahead. Mizuho maintained a "buy" rating on the stock last week while bumping up its price target from $34 to $38. The analyst expects data streaming adoption to soar in the future, driven partly by growing demand for generative artificial intelligence.

The Mizuho price target bump comes on the heels of a solid Q4 report from Confluent. Revenue jumped 26% year over year to $213.2 million, with Confluent's cloud-based offering growing by 46% and enjoying its first $100 million quarter.

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Source Fool.com