Investing.com -- Barclays upgraded Okta to overweight from equal weight, raising its price target to $90 from $85 per share in a note, highlighting that identity security has climbed to the top of enterprise spending priorities.

Analyst Saket Kalia also pointed to the company's agentic opportunity. Kalia cited three drivers behind the upgrade, including improving survey data, better intra-quarter checks and an emerging agentic security tailwind.

Barclays' CIO survey, published alongside the note, ranked identity as the number one security spending priority for the second consecutive survey.

Okta ranked sixth among top security vendors overall, up sharply from near the bottom in 2022 and 2023 following a breach that weighed on sentiment.

The bank noted that identity is now the largest sub-segment in security, growing at a roughly 19% compound annual growth rate off a $28 billion base according to IDC.

Intra-quarter checks are also said to have improved, with Kalia citing healthier underlying demand, stronger channel engagement and better execution following sales force specialization across Workforce and Auth0 implemented last year.

On the agentic opportunity, Barclays "wonder[s] if protecting agents is fundamentally an identity problem," noting that Okta has already secured early six-figure wins from its agentic products despite limited availability.

"We think it's a rising tide, and believe Okta will be a beneficiary," Kalia wrote.

The $90 price target is based on a raised fiscal year 2028 free cash flow estimate of $991 million. Barclays said Okta's broad exposure across multiple high-growth identity sub-markets gives it "multiple durable legs of growth."