EPS best by white a bit -12 vs expected -31
Revenue just about in line 117m
Guidance for 25% growth
Hmmmmm
Looks to me like they grew about 55% y/y
2 Likes
Sorry typos
They beat on eps -12
Vs expected -31
Q4 Revenue: $123.6M, Up 53% YoY
Q4 SaaS Revenue: $29M, Up 110% YoY
FY20 Revenue: $427.6M, Up 57% YoY
Net Retention Rate >130%
Guidance:
FY2021 Q1
Revenue: $119-122M
Non-GAAP EPS: ($0.19-0.17)
FY2021
Revenue: $530-540M
Non-GAAP EPS: ($0.98-0.85)
2 Likes
Quick look FY21 guidance-
Rev- $535mil at midpoint (25% YoY)
non-GAAP EPS: -.98c to -.85c
I am not impressed by these. Especially when all these cloud companies are reporting such good numbers. Still losing large amounts of $ with slowing growth. Probably time to cut this small position loose.
3 Likes
ESTC has dropped about 5% AH, but the numbers from the past quarter looks stellar to me. But their guidance appears a little conservative since it indicates about 25% growth in revenue next FY.
MikeLee
they sandbagged heavily.
The Q4 they just reported had covid-impacted March and April, yet they were easily over 50% y/y growth, with lower losses as their leverage improves.
They expect cash burn to be small in FY21, and expect no need to raise cash.
They have a global business, and perhaps they have a less-rosy view of covid impacts globally…only reason I can think they sandbagged so much on guidance.
For coming Q, they guided to 37% at high-end, so assuming a beat, they could/should be close to 45-50% y/y growth in next Q ER. I expect they will beat and raise rather easily the next 3 Q’s.
Customer growth was steady at 8% Q/Q along with customers over $100k.
NER continued to be over 130%, which is stellar.
They mentioned some weakness in SMB (makes sense with covid) but that segment is about 15% of their total business, so largely negligible. Their focus is largely on enterprise and government, and is global in nature. (40%+ outside of US)
I was disappointed with guidance. Their CEO is more of a tech-ie, than a Jeff Green cheerleader, and probably deferred to a conservative CFO that probably wanted to skip guidance all together. It is what it is.
In terms of what they actually did…the FY was solid and the recent Q was solid.
The stock price wasn’t done any favors with the low guidance, I imagine, but unless they actually put up a sub-40% growth Q this year, I will write it off as sandbagging until proven otherwise.
Dreamer
21 Likes
Dreamer and guys
I was actually very impressed with the results. If you look at constant FX the growth really hasn’t come down much at all (61% to 57%), however the progress on the Non GAAP Op Margin and Net Inc and EPS has been excellent - and that was the one area that most concerned me.
They are guiding to 25% growth for the FY and 35% growth for Q1, which right now won’t have accounted for constant FX and I’m sure includes maximum caution over Covid-19.
Historically whilst Elastic aren’t the worst at playing the sandbagging game (compared with Twilio for example), having looked back at each of the guidance issued in recent quarters and Q4 ER last year for the FY; I can see that:
-
They consistently under guide by about a 10 percentage points basis on a sequential quarter basis - so hopefully the 35% becomes 45%+
-
They forecasted FY to come in at ~47% growth this time last year following last Q4 ER and achieved ~57% growth (or 60% at constant FX) so hopefully the 25% becomes 35%+
I’m very encouraged by the massive improvement in profitability achieved and forecasted, the reported growth do date and progress on growth in the SaaS based revenues (up 110%).
I’m prepared to give the actual reported numbers a chance for a quarter as right now what has been announced has still been excellent and it isn’t as though Elastic is at an expensive valuation.
Ant
16 Likes
- They forecasted FY to come in at ~47% growth this time last year following last Q4 ER and achieved ~57% growth (or 60% at constant FX) so hopefully the 25% becomes 35%+
–
In a non-covid world, they beat guidance by 10%.
Assuming they are being more cautious and conservative in guidance due to covid, i think it is fair to expect there may be an additional 5-10-15% upside on top of typical sandbagging.
I think they may be closer to 40-45% for full FY21 on low-end. Will take about 12 months to play out though!
Dreamer
1 Like
That’s the hope Dreamer - although be aware CV-19 and Fed/monetary response is playing havoc with certain USD FX rates so be prepared to tolerate some variance from constant exchange rates with this one and other companies in similar international situations, (reporting vs domicile locations and international revenue portions).
Ant
Elastic N.V. (ESTC) CEO Shay Banon on Q4 2020 Results - Earnings Call Transcript https://seekingalpha.com/article/4351869-elastic-n-v-estc-ce…
Cc transcript above.
Some tidbits i liked most:
SaaS revenue in the fourth quarter was $29 million, up 110% year-over-year or 120% on a constant currency basis. Fast revenue for FY 2020 was $92.3 million, up 101% year-over-year or 109% on a constant currency basis. We saw strength in both our annual SaaS business as well as our monthly SaaS business. Our rapid growth in SaaS reflects the success of our strategy to widen our competitive moat with proprietary features and to leverage our partnerships.
–
Turning to free cash flow. Free cash flow was negative $6.8 million in Q4. Full year fiscal 2020 free cash flow margin improved two percentage points year-over-year to negative 8%. We’ve demonstrated free cash flow margin improvement of a few percentage points each year for a couple of years now indicating the leverage in our business model as we scaled. We were pleased that we delivered free cash flow margin improvement again this year, despite the dilution from the acquisition of Endgame.
We expect that we will drive improvement in free cash flow margin again in FY 2021 to approximately negative 2% to negative 4% with a goal of achieving positive free cash flow margin in FY 2022.
3 Likes
Folks, but the bottom line for me is decelerating trend of growth: growing in 60s, then moving to 50s and now moving to 40s. This looks somewhat discouraging, don’t u think so? I get it, it’s much cheaper than DDOG, but the trend does not look very positive. What’s ur take on this? Will it re-accelerate like possibly ZS?
Best,
V
1 Like
Seems an OK report. But I don’t like the negative free cash flow. At some point they will need to make a profit too.
Anybody know about their debt structure? I just read an article about Pets.com and similar companies, what killed them more than anything else was debt and lack of access to capital. But capital today is almost free for many tech companies, perhaps for the first time in history.
I think I will keep my ESTC but it is a small holding. There are other companies with fewer questions.
But I don’t like the negative free cash flow. At some point they will need to make a profit too.
Anybody know about their debt structure?
Turning to free cash flow. Free cash flow was negative $6.8 million in Q4. Full year fiscal 2020 free cash flow margin improved two percentage points year-over-year to negative 8%. We’ve demonstrated free cash flow margin improvement of a few percentage points each year for a couple of years now indicating the leverage in our business model as we scaled. We were pleased that we delivered free cash flow margin improvement again this year, despite the dilution from the acquisition of Endgame.
We expect that we will drive improvement in free cash flow margin again in FY 2021 to approximately negative 2% to negative 4% with a goal of achieving positive free cash flow margin in FY 2022.
We ended the year with approximately $297 million in cash and cash equivalents. We remain comfortable with our cash position from an operating perspective.
Brad Reback
Hi, great. Thanks very much, Janesh, two hear competitors has raised close to $2 billion over the last sort of week and a half. And with only with less than $300 million and I understand you’ll be cash flow positive in the next sort of 12 to 18 months. But any reason you wouldn’t go out and raise capital currently?
Janesh Moorjani
Yeah, a couple of thoughts on that. One is that, when you think about the position that we’re in with almost $300 billion of cash on the balance sheet. We feel like we’re in a pretty good condition from an operating standpoint. So, it’s not like we need the cash from an operational perspective. You’ll see that we’ve pointed to continued improvement and our free cash flow margin for fiscal 2021 as well, so we don’t expect to burn a lot of cash. And so our view has been that we manage.
We managed the balance sheet comfortably and conservatively and at this point in time, we don’t - we don’t foresee the need for that our operating position is relatively comfortable. And in the future if the opportunity were to present itself and we needed capital for any other purposes, and I’m sure we can consider things at that point, but at this time, we don’t didn’t feel the need to raise capital.
Dreamer