Cloud reports in two waves, with the first wave of Q4 earnings ramping this week. Microsoft was the first to report on January 25th, and strength in cloud sales helped the company beat expectations. Specifically, Azure and other cloud services revenue increased 46% YoY in the quarter, which drove consolidated sales growth of 20% YoY, beating topline estimates by 2%. In the analysis that follows, I give a brief overview of the cloud industry and discuss key metrics that investors should be aware of heading into Q4 earnings.
Cloud: Top 10 EV/FWD Revenue Multiples
Below we ranked cloud stocks based on their EV/NTM sales multiples. Snowflake (SNOW) has the highest multiple in the cloud sector, as the cloud platform provider most recently reported accelerating topline growth coupled with improving retention and other key metrics. Snowflake is benefitting from increasing rates of data ingestion in the cloud environment, a secular tailwind that will likely continue to be strong in the near term.
SentinelOne (S), Zscaler (ZS) and Cloudflare (NET) follow Snowflake’s valuation and have been rewarded a relative premium in the cloud category. Each of these companies provides cybersecurity solutions, which is a market that will likely continue to see strong demand as companies increasingly digitize and migrate online. As companies move online, their attack surfaces increase, driving demand for cyber security solutions.
It is noteworthy that cloud valuations have normalized in 2022 following the heightened volatility in financial markets. Nonetheless, these leading cloud companies highlighted below will likely continue to report robust growth in the near term as cloud adoption remains a strong secular tailwind for the foreseeable future.
Cloud: Top 10 Three-month Forward YoY Growth Rates
Below is a chart of forward sales growth expectations for cloud stocks expected to grow the fastest in the upcoming quarter. Bill.com (BILL) is expected to report the fastest growth rate in our cloud universe heading into Q4 earnings at nearly 140% YoY. However, Bill.com recently completed its acquisition of Invoice2go, which impacts the company’s as-presented topline growth rate.
Absent M&A, Bill.com’s sales are still strong and recently grew 78% YoY on an organic basis, up from the 73% YoY organic growth rate in the prior quarter. Also noteworthy are the differing growth rates between Monday.com and Asana, two work productivity platforms that are both rapidly growing.
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Monday.com is expected to grow sales 75% YoY to $88 million while Asana is expected to grow sales slower at 54% YoY to $105 million in quarterly sales. The next few quarters will likely shed light on which platform is the leading work productivity solution going forward. Strength in enterprise will be a key metric to monitor to gain insight into which company is the leading work productivity platform.
Top 10 Weekly Share Price Movements
Below is a table of the weekly change in share price for our universe of cloud stocks (week ended 01/21). Markets have been volatile and every cloud stock in our universe was down last week as the Nasdaq declined by 7%. However, there were some relative outperformers, such as Workday (WDAY) and Zuora (ZUO), both of which support back-office operations, and the market may be expecting these companies to perform well given the labor shortage. Furthermore, Anaplan (PLAN), Box (BOX) and Dropbox (DBX) have also outperformed well on a YTD basis, and were up 4%, 2% and 3% relative to the Nasdaq’s 7% YTD decline. Lengthening the timeframe to 1-year and Box has performed the strongest of the three and is up 38% YoY. Likely contributing to its outperformance, Box has reported three consecutive quarters of acceleration topline growth, with sales rising 14% and billings increasing 25% YoY in Q3. The outperformance in billings suggests sales may continue to accelerate, and management guided for Q4 sales to accelerate to 15% YoY.
Top 10 Changes in sales growth estimates – last 90 days
The table below ranks cloud stocks by their topline revisions over the last 90 days. An increase in topline revisions signals that the Street believes that the company will grow faster than initially believed, which can result in outperformance. Confluent (CFLT) has had a 16% topline revisions over the last three-months, which leads cloud stocks. Confluent raised its FY2022 sales guide in November by 8% at the mid-point and also announced a partnership with Alibaba in December, both of which likely contributed to the higher topline estimates. Another standout is New Relic (NEWR), which saw a 9% rise in estimates over the last 90 days, driven by a strong earnings report as the company reported an acceleration in sales and guided for a further acceleration in Q2. New Relic’s shares are up 27% over the last three-months as the company recently revamped its product offering and migrated to a consumption billing model. Time will tell if the recent changes resulted in sustainable growth or if the recent changes provided only a short-term boost to growth.
Update on EV/Fwd revenue multiples:
Overall stats:
- Overall cloud forward median: 8x
