Okta has a great earnings day on the back of strong international growth

Okta kept its beat-streak alive today with a healthy earnings report. On the back of international growth and a healthy services business, Okta beat revenue expectations by nine percent and managed to handily top EPS expectations.

Analysts had been expecting about $55.9 million in revenue with a loss of $0.26 per share. Instead, Okta reported $61 million in revenue with $0.16 loss per share.

Okta’s six offerings support businesses’ efforts to secure the “extended enterprise.” This is corporate-speak for managing contractors and other suppliers who need to access enterprise services but might be using their personal, unsecured devices.

Company CEO Todd McKinnon specifically drew attention to improving operating margin within the earnings report itself. The company has been working hard to ensure thoughtful growth while scaling its sales and marketing operations.

“We are not a grow-at-all-costs company,” Frederic Kerrest, COO of Okta, explained to me in an interview. “We don’t have that mentality.”

As this process moves forward, Kerrest says he is paying attention to net retention rates, the number of customers paying over $100,000 per year and international growth rates. International growth currently represents approximately 15 percent of Okta’s total revenue. Revenue overall has grown 63 percent year-over-year while international revenue is growing at about 100 percent YoY.

General and administrative operating expenses have increased substantively over the last year as Okta, like every public company, builds up compliance infrastructure to adhere to Sarbanes-Oxley. Otherwise, sales and marketing expenses are increasing as one would expect of a rapidly scaling company.

Kerrest hopes to continue to de-emphasize Okta’s services businesses, its other revenue driver outside subscriptions. The company is building up partnerships with consulting firms like Accenture to offload enterprise integration work.

In general, things are looking good for Okta. From April to July, Okta’s share price wobbled up and down between $22 and $26 per share. But since the start of August, Okta has been on a tear. The company’s share price pushed upwards from $22.37 on July 28 to nearly $28 this week. And Okta’s second earnings report alone drove its share price up five percent to $28.50 in the initial moments after it was released.