Hi Everyone,
I took a look at Samsara’s earnings report, and here’s my key take aways:
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)= 1176M +37.4% (2% above est.)
Customers with ARR >$100k increased 18.1% QoQ
Non-GAAP operating income was $6.2M this was underwhelming to me
Non-GAAP operaing margin was 2.0% this was underwhelming to me
EV/CY 25 predicted sales is ~13
Morgan Stanley said that other vendors such as ServiceNow are studying this space and are potential competitors in the future.
I think that Samsara is doing OK. I’m interested in learning more about the Mexican operations in the future, but I am concerned about growth, which I expect to be lumpy.
I’m down 10.5% on the year, and this has fallen to my smallest postion at 11.2% of my portfolio. I plan to keep an eye out for competition, but hold for now. That would change quickly if a significant competitor joins the fray.
Speaking of competition and being underwhelmed, I was underwhelmed that Sanjit declined to respond to a question about the lawsuit against one of their competitors (Motive):
James Fish
Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. No worries. I’m actually on. Look, we’re seeing some competitors wind down their telematics business and shift into other areas. I guess how much is that benefiting the current environment for you? And how have win rates been trending? Just generally any update on the competitive environment and as well as against the vendor you actually have a lawsuit against to, if those win rates are improving, given you guys have that on the table and try and prevent them from copying you?
Sanjit Biswas
Hi, James, this is Sanjit. I would say, in general, the competitive environment has been quite stable. There are a number of legacy point solutions that our customers have adopted over the last 20, 25 years, and many of them are now looking to standardize on a single-platform approach, which is what we offer and we’re that system of record for them. So, I think we do offer a very modern solution, and that’s been our value proposition really since the beginning. That’s still resonating. And then, the competitive dynamic with the variety of competitors, again, is stable, and you see that reflect in our gross margin. It’s been very stable. So overall, it’s a big market out there, and we’re just continuing to grow.
I’m holding onto my small position, but to remain in my portfolio they’ll need to accomplish more, and quick. It’s starting to look to me like maybe the only moat they have is First Mover advantage, which imo isn’t a particularly strong moat in this case. All a competitor has to do is demonstrate a similar ROI and BOOM, there go the margins.
They do seem to be getting quick traction with Connected Forms; that does seem promising.
IOT’s year over year revenue was up 37%. Quater over quater was up 1.6%? (May 2024 rev 280,726 Feb 24 rev 276,274, taken from their investor relations website). Am I mistaken? I read the confrence call transcripts and it sounded to be business as usual and none of the analysts asked about quater over quater being so weak. Thats what makes me think that I’m missing something. If anyone can shed a little light on the quater over quater revenue increase I would appricate it.
You aren’t mistaken, but Q4 had a calendar quirk that resulted in an extra week (so 14 weeks instead of 13). Without the extra week Q4 revenue would have been $256.5M and QoQ for Q1 would have been 9.4%. That’s also why IOT announced the adjusted FY guide as 31-32% rather than the raw 29% the math produces.
On the competitive front, I saw that CalAmp went into insolvency. I wonder how that changes the market forces in the core vehicle telemetry space.
Personally I wasn’t too wowed by the numbers this quarter and they are guiding for another significant drop off in growth. The double digit share price hit has probably left them net neutral in valuation in my view but less compelling potential and possibly more competition to come.
Also not impressed with the lack of disclosure on progress across new verticals beyond vehicle telemetry. I get it takes time but whether it was Municipal monitoring, Utilities infrastructure or Security, there has to be some strategy and planning now - it can’t be still experimental.
Management overlaid a new ARR per $100K customer metric on its $100K customer slide. The CFO noted how those two played off each other in the percentage of business coming from large customers. However, the timing gives it a vibe IOT is using the average ARR number in an attempt to soften the blow of an obvious decrease in the cadence of $100K customers added this quarter.
After disclosing the number of new $1M customers the last few quarters, I can’t find it anywhere in the presentation, shareholder letter, or call unless I just missed it. I emailed IR Thursday after the call asking about the $1M+ number but have yet to hear back.
An analyst asked directly about #1 above on the call:
Aleksandr Zukin
Perfect. And then maybe just as a follow-up. If I look at the net adds this quarter, really solid at [ 116 ]. What’s the takeaway from that. It’s a little lower for the $100K customers, still little lower than last year’s kind of cadence. But is that – is there any kind of incremental macro hesitancy that’s maybe shifting things more seasonally to the back half or qualify that number, if you can?
Dominic Phillips
Yes. No, I think you’ve got to look at both sides of this, not only the number of $100K+ additions, but also the average ARR per $100K+ customer increased to $316K this quarter versus $305K in Q1 of last year. Last year, the average ARR per customer was flat 0% growth versus the prior Q1. This quarter was up 4%. And so we more than offset the number of $100K+ ads by increasing the average size per customer. And you can see that result in the ARR mix from large customers increased to 53% this quarter, up from 52% last quarter and 49% a year ago.
In my opinion, the pleasant surprise in margins, cash flows, and profits this quarter was somewhat muted by softish sequential growth and $100K customer adds. Given FY24’s calendar quirk, maybe this all smooths out over the next quarter or two. Regardless, I feel Samsara has left itself a thing or two to prove that definitely wasn’t there before.
Why is IOT down after top and bottom line beats and raises (37% YOY growth)? I don’t see a huge reason and am adding a bit down here.
I watched an interview with CEO Sanjit Biswas on CNBC and he said:
Guidance less conservative now cuz of more visibility
In an uncertain macro environment, we serve companies in the world of physical operations (construction, utilities) which are at the BEGINNING of investing in digitization. From pen and paper to the cloud, a journey they’ll be on FOR DECADES!
Customers are operations buyers, not IT buyers.
Delivering clear and fast ROI through fuel and insurance savings
No signs of slowing down in adoption
Strongest adoption in construction industry (i.e. Vinci, Fortune 500 company, big win)
There are competitors but this seems like pretty greenfield right now.
On top of my head, CRWD is very much the one that has managed to consistently buck the sector performance. Even MDB, after doing so well relative to peers for quite a while, fell off a cliff. IOT was also doing very well. I would not worry about details in the company report. I don’t think that’s the issue.
WCLD managed all of 25% in 2023, a very poor performance considering QQQ was +52%. In 2024, which has been a pretty easy year so far, IMO, WCLD is somehow -12% vs +17% for QQQ. WCLD is practically rubbing shoulders with ARKK. Which is saying something because ARKK is essentially a macro trading tool.
Why has the market turned against SaaS? I think the macro is one issue, but what concerns me is that according to Jamin Ball, there is a massive problem within the sector as 1/ he was very disappointed with the sector Q1 performance and Q2 expectations and 2/ J. ball claims that IT spend increases are being redirected towards “AI for me” efforts. Now, you could argue that this partly results from the macro, but at the end, it does not matter. The picture is not good per Ball’s reports.
Why should that affect IOT? IMO, this is the same as with why does everything go on sale on a really bad market day as everything correlates to 1. If the entire sector is considered a “sell” for a prolonged time, it is very hard for any individual company to stand out because big money normally buys sectors or portions of sectors, not just 2-3 cherry picked companies. And the smaller the market cap, the less likely a company can be cherry picked.
So from here, one needs to decide if they want to swim against macro and sector currents. IMO, the price of IOT will only be a verdict on IOT when the macro and sector are in an uptrend. While I am actually bullish on the macro, I am not at all amused by J. Ball’s sector assessment.
I was re-reading through this thread today and this was close to a thought I had for the first time today (I know, I’m a little slow. They reported over a week ago!): they really didn’t call out any big customer wins like they have in previous quarters…airlines, cities…
I went back and listened and they did call out Nutrient Ag Solutions and Frontier Communications. Ok…but these seemed more routine.
I have to agree with @stocknovice, and this is problematic for me. Now Samsara’s price has dropped and the valuation is reasonable, so I can again believe there’s some upside here and I would love to have the confidence to bolster my position size. But there are real questions, I think, not just about the macro or even the competition, but maybe the TAM. I really didn’t expect them to have trouble adding customers here…and I expected some impressive big lands among them.
Samsara was cruising until this quarter. Anyone have a good better feel for this seeming slow-down? Anyone still have high confidence here? Why or why not?
I greatly reduced after I posted my review to reflect my updated confidence. They are now at 1%, in the realm of a tryout position.
Reasons I’m almost out:
growth isn’t matching the expanding TAM or the trend towards efficiency which makes me think there is something wrong with their execution or go-to-market which often doesn’t suddenly change
they are still my 2nd most expensive company on EV/NTM Sales.
almost all of my companies are growing faster at much larger revenue bases
Reason I’m still hanging on:
to one of the points they made, they are dealing with very traditional clients who I’d imagine are tough to sell. But there may be a tipping point where holdouts start jumping on the bandwagon, per se.
It was a yellow flag for me when the company went public with that lawsuit and seemingly violated their own security and data policies to expose the copycat company. The fact that the copycat company might have been able to duplicate their product just from trying out their product makes me have serious doubts about the competitive advantage the product has.
Also I was digging in a little bit recently to how Samsara structures contracts, and they have a minimum three year lock in that has to be paid upfront. From their knowledge base FAQs,
Why do I have to pay upfront for 3 years?
At this time, our policy for customers of your fleet size requires upfront payments for 3-year contracts and we offer a risk-free 30-day return period subject to our Product Refund Request policy at Hardware Warranty and RMA Policy if you decide our platform doesn’t meet your needs.
Since generative AI is only two years old, and Samsara will only do a three year minimum I could see many companies wanting to re-evaluate. Also if their product is as sticky as they say and provides an “immediate ROI”, why do they need any lock in terms and take upfront payment? Does any other SaaS company do this?
Ancedotally, I know someone who runs a small trucking company, maybe 20-30 trucks. I asked if they had heard of Samsara and they had, but said it’s too expensive to consider. Probably because it’s three years of upfront payment. Granted this is a very small individually owned company, and not the typical enterprise Samsara sells too, but it would be nice if smaller customers felt the need to get this product rather than be an expensive novelty.
I halved my position in $IOT today and used some of the proceeds to buy $FOUR. With a Forward PE of 201, $IOT seemed overvalued to me, and I believe $FOUR offers better upside potential in the foreseeable future.
I sold $IOT, retaining only a token position to monitor.
Similar reasons:
Other companies in my portfolio have similar growth rates and/or profitability (top line and bottom line) at a much lower P/E: $MNDY, $CRWD, $ZS, $ELF, $NVDA
If I remember correctly, I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m not so sure that what $IOT is doing is actually “AI” and it might be more like just plain old fashioned heuristics. Like @wpr101 says, $IOT’s offerings predate the recent generative-AI level-up. I wasn’t concerned about it a long as the numbers kept coming in, but the numbers are no longer the slam-dunk they used to be.
I also think maybe $IOT protested a bit too much when they threw their tantrum about Motive, and in the process may have tipped their hand that their tech may not be be as exclusive or as sticky as they’ve been saying. Maybe they have a moat, but they don’t have the moat that $MNDY, $CRWD, $ZS and $NVDA have. Really all they have imo for a moat is first-mover advantage collecting data, but Motive is already eating into that.
I’m not positive about any of the above, but I do think that other opportunities are available that have numbers and narratives that support a more straightforward thesis.
I’d be happy to reconsider $IOT if/when the narrative and/or numbers paint a more clear picture. I do think that Connected Forms could be a lifeline for them but I’m not willing to gamble on it when I have less risky options.
One question on their core trucking and mobility market, does anyone know how much business is at risk when EV FSD arrives? Ok you need to monitor tyre pressure and location but that maybe about it. FSD will be programmed to drive optimally, there won’t be a driver to monitor, no oil or fuel to monitor. In fact the current customers might not even exist if these are operated as Robo taxi fleets of semis that customers do not actually own or lease but operate from fractional usage from Tesla or something.
Unfortunately, it will take a while for electric trucks to truly start displacing diesel.
However, these transitions in the past have tended to explode after a prolonged slow start; at some point the slowly rolling snowball suddenly accelerates and becomes an avalanche.
Otherwise, yes, a Tesla gives you anything you need, including of course location and tire pressure. The Tesla trucks from what I have seen on video are phenomenal. They are also extremely few and yet to prove themselves over time. I do see Rivian AMZN trucks all over my area so those kinds of fleets might be the first to convert.
There should be plenty of opportunity in the meantime but the issue of moat is big one.