3 Software-As-Service Leaders Set For Strong Earnings As Q2 Season Winds Down
Investing.com | Aug 18, 2021 11:32
Wall Street’s second quarter earnings season has all but wound down, but results in the coming weeks are due from a variety of cloud-computing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies.
The sector sold off sharply earlier this year amid valuation concerns, before it regained its footing, with the First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (NASDAQ:SKYY) rising to its highest level on record earlier this month.
Below we highlight three SaaS leaders well worth considering ahead of their upcoming quarterly earnings reports.
h2 1. CrowdStrike Holdings/h2- Earnings Date: Tuesday, Aug. 31
- EPS Growth Estimate: +166.6% Y-o-Y
- Revenue Growth Estimate: +62.4% Y-o-Y
- Year-To-Date Performance: +9.9%
- Market Cap: $52.5 Billion
Crowdstrike Holdings (NASDAQ:CRWD)—which has beaten Wall Street’s sales estimates in every quarter since going public in June 2019—is scheduled to report its latest financial results after the U.S. market closes on Tuesday, Aug. 31.
Consensus expectations call for the cloud-based cybersecurity specialist, whose technology is used to detect and prevent security breaches, to post earnings per share (EPS) of $0.08 for the second quarter, improving roughly 167% from EPS of $0.03 in the year-ago period.
Meanwhile, revenue is forecast to jump around 62% year-over-year to an all-time high of $323.3 million, reflecting the ongoing surge in demand for its Falcon cybersecurity platform.
Beyond the top-and-bottom line numbers, investors will keep an eye on growth in CrowdStrike’s total subscription customers. The endpoint security leader—which counts nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies as clients—said it had a total of 11,420 customers as of the end of its last quarter, up 82% year-over-year.
Market players will also pay close attention to the cyber company’s outlook for the rest of the year as it looks to be one of the main beneficiaries of the ongoing increase in cybersecurity spending amid the rampant surge in cyberattacks.
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Shares of the Sunnyvale, California-based company, which soared 324% in 2020 thanks to a growing wave of enterprise cybersecurity spending during the COVID pandemic, have seen their ascent slow this year, climbing just 9.9% in 2021.
CRWD stock ended Tuesday’s session at $232.64, earning the company a valuation of $52.5 billion. At current levels, shares remain about 14.5% below their all-time high of $272.63 reached on July 23.
h2 2. Okta/h2- Earnings Date: Wednesday, Sept. 1
- EPS Growth Estimate: -600% Y-o-Y
- Revenue Growth Estimate: +48% Y-o-Y
- Year-To-Date Performance: -9.3%
- Market Cap: $35.3 Billion
Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA), which beat expectations for earnings and revenue for its last quarter in late May, but provided weak guidance and announced the departure of its chief financial officer, is slated to next report financial results after the closing bell on Wednesday, Sept. 1.
Consensus calls for a loss per share of $0.35 for the second quarter, compared to earnings of $0.07 per share in the year-ago period, due mostly to the impact of its recent $6.5 billion acquisition of Auth0, which provides an identity management platform for application builders.
Revenue is forecast to jump 48% year-over-year to an all-time high of $296.7 million, thanks to strong demand from large enterprises for its cloud-based identity and access management software.
As such, investors will focus on Okta’s subscription software revenue, which grew 38% in the last quarter to $240 million, amid the shift to remote work during the ongoing health crisis.
In addition to EPS and revenue, market participants will scrutinize the company’s update regarding its outlook for the months ahead. The identity-and-access management specialist projected a loss in a range of $1.13 to $1.16 per share for fiscal 2022 in the last quarter. It forecast full-year revenue of $1.22 billion at its midpoint of guidance, representing growth of 46% year-over-year.
OKTA stock closed at $230.56 last night, roughly 22% below its record peak of $294.00 touched in mid-February. At current levels, the San Francisco, California-based cybersecurity company has a market cap of $35.3 billion.
After seeing its stock surge 120% in 2020 thanks to robust demand for its cybersecurity platform, Okta shares are down nearly 9% year-to-date as investor sentiment cooled on high-growth tech shares which rallied throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
h2 3. DocuSign/h2- Earnings Date: Thursday, Sept. 2
- EPS Growth Estimate: +135.3% Y-o-Y
- Revenue Growth Estimate: +42.8% Y-o-Y
- Year-To-Date Performance: +28.5%
- Market Cap: $55.6 Billion
DocuSign (NASDAQ:DOCU)—which shattered profit and sales records in the last quarter because of soaring demand for its e-signature platform—is projected to report financial results for its fiscal second quarter on Thursday, Sept. 2 after the close.
Consensus estimates call for the software-as-a-service company to post earnings per share of $0.40, improving 135% from EPS of $0.17 in the year-ago period.
Revenue is expected to jump about 43% year-over-year to a record $488.7 million, thanks to strong demand for its Agreement Cloud e-signature platform amid the shift to remote work.
In addition to the top- and bottom-line numbers, market players will also focus on DocuSign’s update regarding its enterprise customer additions to see if it can maintain its torrid pace of growth. The company announced in its Q1 earnings report that clients with annual contract values of greater than $300,000 grew roughly 30% from the year-ago period to 673.
Investors will also concentrate on comments from DocuSign’s management regarding the outlook for the current quarter and beyond, as the existing operating environment has created a perfect backdrop for the e-signature giant to thrive.
DOCU stock, which reached a record high of $314.49 on Aug. 10, ended at $285.58 yesterday, earning the San Francisco, California-based tech company a valuation of $55.6 billion.
DocuSign shares have been a big winner amid the pandemic, rising 200% in 2020, as the shift to the work-from-home environment led to more companies signing contracts electronically over the internet. Year-to-date, DOCU has gained another 28.5%, easily outperforming the broader market.
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