Anaplan (Plan)

This post by WSM was fantastic! https://discussion.fool.com/bear-thanks-for-your-and-others39-gr…

I can only assume the reason it doesn’t have 50 or 100 recs is because it was lost in another thread. I’m giving it it’s own thread here, but all credit goes to WSM. See his post linked above for the quarterly trends on most metrics, and many other highlights. I’ll touch on some below.

WSM: Other interesting metrics:
Payback period 22 months (improved vs prior Qs)
LTV:CAC - 5.4 times (improved vs prior Qs)

Those numbers seem fantastic and I love that they give them. Wish all our companies did regularly. I remember seeing charts where many SaaS companies have LTV:CAC more like 3x, so over 5 seems incredible.

WSM: Key issue: Billing growth dropped from >50% in prior Qs to 25% in Q4.

I agree that this probably caused the drop after their last Q. They dropped more on COVID-19 but have recovered most of that. If the billings drop was mostly a tough comp / seasonal thing, they should rebound. But as WSM pointed out, management changes are afoot as well in the growth/revenue department. On the last CC they said: We do not believe our fourth quarter billings results reflect our growth and execution potential, and we are focused on improving these results with the refinement in our go-to-market organization we recently implemented. I assume the go-to-market strategy they refer to is what WSM pointed out regarding the bundling of Anaplan with partners’ products.

The picture is a bit murky, but I am encouraged by these partnerships, the NRR always over 120%, and revenue growth – it doesn’t seem that the sales issues have caused any severe troubles. When I sold PLAN in Aug 2019, the PS ratio was about 24. At about 16 now, this is a buy if the company is still on track. That’s the million dollar question, but I think it’s worth watching at least. I am not confident enough to make it a large position, but I will certainly consider a small position and perhaps options, to keep it on my radar.

Again, many thanks to WSM.

Bear

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