One label, three different businesses

A database that tracks corporate software groups Okta, SailPoint and BlackBerry together as "identity and access management" companies — software that verifies who a person or machine is before letting them into a corporate system. Over the past year the three have averaged a roughly 52% gain, and all three have flipped from a sustained downtrend to a sustained uptrend on their price charts, with no single-day spikes involved. That combination — a shared label, a synchronized multi-month reversal — usually signals a sector being re-rated together. Pulled apart, the three stories barely touch each other, and only one of the three is actually selling more identity software at an accelerating clip.

Okta, which sells software that lets employees and customers log into corporate systems with a single verified identity (single sign-on and multi-factor authentication), is up about 45% over 12 months, from $97.72 to $141.57. SailPoint, which sells software that governs which employees and machines can access which internal systems (identity governance), is actually down about 16.5% over the same period, from $20.60 to $17.20, despite a headline-grabbing upgrade in the final days of July. BlackBerry, the former smartphone maker that now supplies the QNX operating system used in car dashboards and driver-assistance computers, plus a government-focused secure-communications business, is up 126%, from $3.77 to $8.52 — and that single stock is doing almost all the arithmetic work behind the group's "52% year."

Okta: real improvement, a price that's already banked it

Okta's numbers did get better. Revenue for the quarter ended April 2026 came in at $765 million, up 11% year over year and ahead of the $752 million analysts expected; the backlog of contracted future revenue (remaining performance obligations) rose 16% to $4.7 billion, and net revenue retention — a measure of whether existing customers are spending more over time — inflected up to 107% after languishing lower. Operating margin expanded to 7.3% from 5.7% a year earlier, and free cash flow ran near a 30% margin in fiscal 2026. But revenue growth itself has been flat to slowly decelerating for four straight quarters — 12.7%, then 11.6%, 11.6%, and 11.2% — a pace that doesn't match a stock that has roughly doubled off its 2025 low and now trades at 7.35 times forward sales, about double the 3.9 times multiple that looked cheap to the same research desk in May. Okta's own 44-analyst consensus price target of $120.45 sits about 13% below the current $141.57 share price even after the beat. Management's newer products for managing AI-agent credentials — Okta for AI Agents and a connection-governance protocol called Cross App Access, which already counts more than 25 early partners including Anthropic and Slack — have no disclosed revenue line yet; CEO Todd McKinnon has said they are "not yet materially contributing" to results. Microsoft remains the biggest threat, bundling its competing Entra ID product into Microsoft 365 licenses that many Okta customers already own, making it the easiest replacement path for Microsoft-centric shops.

SailPoint: an upgrade with no earnings behind it

SailPoint's price chart flipped from a sustained downtrend to a sustained uptrend between July 29 and July 31 — but the company's last earnings call was June 9, nearly two months earlier. Quarterly revenue growth has actually decelerated from a 33% peak to a steadier 19–23% range over the last four quarters, and operating margin, while improved from a disastrous -80% a year ago (which included one-time IPO costs), is still deeply negative at -28.5%. The stock's market value of $9.76 billion remains below the roughly $12.8 billion valuation it carried at its February 2025 re-listing. No forward analyst estimates exist in the data to anchor a multiple; on trailing sales it trades near 8.7 times revenue with a free-cash-flow yield of just 1.9%.

BlackBerry: a car-chip and government story wearing an identity label

BlackBerry's turnaround has nothing to do with identity software — its Persona product is a minor line item, not a disclosed driver. The June quarter's 26% revenue growth came from its QNX automotive-software unit (up 26%, aided by design wins with Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volvo and a partnership with Nvidia) and its Secure Communications government business (up 24% on a Canadian government contract), alongside five straight quarters of positive net income and an active share buyback funded by $423 million in cash. None of that is identity software, and none of it belongs in a story about the security layer that verifies logins.

What the charts add and don't

All three names show the same pattern underneath: Okta's 50-day and 200-day price averages crossed decisively bullish on the 90-day, 180-day and 365-day views; BlackBerry's did the same across all three windows; SailPoint's flipped within the last week. That technical alignment is real and unusually synchronized, but it agrees with the fundamentals only for BlackBerry, whose earnings actually accelerated; for Okta the chart has run ahead of an 11% growth business, and for SailPoint the chart moved without a new earnings print behind it.

The setup

Where it stands — A shared "identity" label masks three unrelated stories: one real but overpriced (Okta), one chart-led (SailPoint), one mislabeled (BlackBerry). Would confirm — Okta's next quarterly report shows subscription revenue growth back above 13% with net revenue retention holding at or above 107%. Would invalidate — Okta trades back below its $120 consensus price target, or SailPoint's next earnings call shows net-new annual recurring revenue still decelerating. Watch next — SailPoint's next quarterly earnings call, and Okta's fiscal Q2 FY27 report expected around late August 2026. Valuation — Okta: 7.35x forward sales, 36.8x forward earnings, versus 3.9x trailing sales in May 2026; SailPoint: 8.7x trailing sales, no forward consensus; BlackBerry: 8.06x forward sales, 44.3x forward earnings.