Missed the work-from-home trade? These stocks could be the next ones to benefit, RBC says

Published Tue, Jul 7 20207:07 AM EDTUpdated Tue, Jul 7 20208:30 AM EDT

Jesse Pound @/in/jesse-pound @jesserpound

(This story is for CNBC Pro subscribers only.) The rapid increase of employees working from home could accelerate a shift in cybersecurity spending by companies, creating another round of surging work-from-home stocks, RBC Capital Markets said. The forced experiment in working from home at many companies caused by the pandemic was a boon to tech stocks such as Zoom Video and Fastly . However, a few of RBC's "vendors to watch" after the pandemic haven't yet seen dramatic moves higher. The shift to working from home puts roughly $100 billion of "legacy spend" between now and 2025 up for grabs, according to RBC, as companies rethink how to let employees access their networks from anywhere in a way that minimizes risk. "While mega-trends such as cloud adoption and digital transformations seem well-established, we believe COVID could accelerate changes in the security fabric by up to five years which could dramatically change the security landscape," RBC analysts said in a note to investors. One of the stocks on RBC's list is Palo Alto Networks . The cybersecurity stock has not regained its February highs and is up just under 2% for the year, lagging the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite. "Of the firewall vendors, we believe PANW could be best positioned to leverage cloud-security trends," the note said. The firm rates the stock at sector perform. Another name singled out in the note was VMWare . RBC said the company "could be in a unique position to consolidate spend ... and also move into adjacent categories." The bank pointed to VMWare's acquisition of Carbon Black last year as one path for it to gain market share. The stock, which has a market cap of roughly $60 billion, was still trading in negative territory for the year on Monday. RBC has an outperform rating for VMWare. In addition to those two stocks, RBC identified other names that have already benefited from the work-from-home trade but could take advantage of this shift in cybersecurity. Two of those stocks were Crowdstrike , which has more than doubled in price this year, and Okta , which has jumped nearly 80%. The bank has an outperform rating for both stocks.

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(This story is for CNBC Pro subscribers only.)

The rapid increase of employees working from home could accelerate a shift in cybersecurity spending by companies, creating another round of surging work-from-home stocks, RBC Capital Markets said.

The forced experiment in working from home at many companies caused by the pandemic was a boon to tech stocks such as Zoom Video and Fastly. However, a few of RBC's "vendors to watch" after the pandemic haven't yet seen dramatic moves higher.