Earnings season is nearly always upon us, mainly because many software companies offset their internal calendar by a month so they can avoid closing their financial years in December, granting them all of January to wrap their fourth quarter.
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What all that means for you and I is that this week is going to bring a whole mess of software financial data, and it has me excited!
As someone who spends most of his time thinking about, and discussing, private-market companies, I look forward to reading public tech companies’ financial results, because they have to spill the beans four times a year, giving us an excellent window into what is really happening on the ground.
This sort of data helps TechCrunch+ understand the crypto market, the IPO window, Big Tech, and, this week, what’s up with software companies.
Here’s a rundown of the key names reporting third-quarter results this week and what we might learn from them:
Monday: Zscaler
Worth more than $28 billion, Zscaler is a major name in the world of cybersecurity. CrowdStrike is also reporting this week, so we should be able to close out Friday with a wealth of data about the cybersecurity market. Venture investors are generally bullish on digital security products and companies, so strong results from Zscaler could help keep that optimism alive.
Tuesday: Workday, CrowdStrike, and Splunk
Workday, worth nearly $62 billion this morning, has a history of reporting better results than analysts expect, according to Google Finance. Investors will be hoping that the financial-and-human capital management company did well in its most recent quarter, and the company’s performance will have implications on HR tech startups.
As for CrowdStrike, it is one of the most richly valued software companies on the public markets today, thanks in part to rapid historical growth rates. Can it defend its price-sales multiple? Cybersecurity startups certainly hope so.
Splunk is best known in my household for sponsoring the McLaren F1 team, but in the realm of big data, it’s known for, well, its data products. I’m not 100% sure how Splunk results may influence our thinking about startups, but as it is worth more than $25 billion, the company is well worth our time this week.
Wednesday: Salesforce, Snowflake, Okta, Bilibili, nCino and Zuora
The middle of the week is going to be busy as all heck.
Things to watch on Wednesday include: How much growth can Salesforce attribute to its AI-related efforts? The more the better for startups selling AI-infused products to other companies.
Snowflake is a massive data company that competes with Databricks. We have questions regarding how enterprise spend is shaping up, and also what the company has to say on the AI front.
Okta is a different beast. Normally, we’d simply consider it an identity SaaS company, but a recent security breach has put its shares under pressure. How much churn did the breach cause? We’ll find out soon. For startups, the lesson here is that breaches are bad, especially if you are in the “keeping things secure” game.
Then there’s a grab-bag of other names. Bilibili will tell us a bit about the video market in China; nCino will report on the health of Salesforce’s platform; and Zuora will once again try to break out of its historically modest growth rates and put up some real numbers. That sound you hear is me rubbing my hands together in anticipation of new data.
Thursday: Dell, Samsara, UiPath and PagerDuty
We are including Dell this time since the company does a lot more than sell PCs, which means that we have to read its results whether or not we really want to.
Samsara is far more interesting. The company has a history of fast revenue growth and is essentially the leading technology light in the world of IoT. I’ve spoken with the company a number of times in the last year and am keeping tabs on its use of AI at the edge.
UiPath is an obvious critical earnings report, because of, well, AI. The melding of AI and automation could form a potent mix since businesses want to save money, and AI costs less than humans. Mix in a little process automation and, boom, savings! At least that’s the idea. We’ll see how well that’s playing out in both product and business terms later this week.
And then there’s PagerDuty. It turns out that the company is rebranding, calling itself “the AI-powered operations platform.” I need to better understand that, which means this is the perfect time to read its financial report, yeah?