There's no nice way to say it. The last two years have been brutal for the software sector. Software-as-a-service stocks were among the biggest winners from the 2010s through the pandemic, but since the Nasdaq Composite peak in November 2021, cloud software stocks have plunged, and many of them struggled to recover even as big tech stocks rallied this year.

Among the losers has been Appian (NASDAQ: APPN), the provider of low-code automation software. The stock surged briefly in 2020 and 2021 on a short squeeze and hopes that its low-code software would see a boom during the pandemic. However, it gave up much of those gains in 2021 and struggled to recover since then. This year, the stock is up 23%, but it's still down 83% from the peak in 2021.

Along that journey, Appian, which helps enterprises automate their workflows, continued to deliver solid growth in its core cloud subscription business, but profits remain elusive.

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Source Fool.com