Player validation & margin comparison data

Guys

I came across some interesting slides that at a glance highlight key SAAS players as well as providing margin comparison. It is embedded within the investor presentation for Qualys - which I happen to hold but that’s immaterial for the purposes of this content. The interesting slides are slide 6 that refers to and validates key players in the sector and slide 24 comparing margins across the board.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4100293-qualys-2017-q2-resu…

Ant

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Pretty cool, Ant. Though I will say that I don’t find slide 24 particularly interesting, as (for example) Splunk’s positive margin is an illusion based on SBC as I said here (http://discussion.fool.com/why-i-sold-splunk-32822182.aspx) and Talend, on the other hand, is losing far less than Splunk as a percentage of revenue, but not covering it up with excessive SBC, so their margin shows negative. That’s why you have to look closer at SBC as I meant to say in another post, but didn’t do a great job expressing…and then that thread unfortunately got sidetracked into a GAAP/non-GAAP debate.

But I like slide 6 a lot, and if you have thoughts about it I’d love to hear them.

Bear

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Bear - agree you need to know what’s going on underneath the surface but it’s a starting point at least and you can take a look at exceptionals from there.

On the coverage of the players - I thought it an interesting validation of who is recognised as out there and significant; also who’s company they keep and the construct in terms of how they fit in. One IPO I am looking forward to is Docker who just recruited the former Concur chief to run - they were listed. The construct also helped differentiate who fits in where in terms of the infrastructure to application continuum. Don’t fancy being the incumbents in the middle! I thought it was interesting that Google and Microsoft basically end up playing at either end. Should have bought MSoft after the financial crisis!

Ant

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