What happened
Shares of Splunk Inc. (SPLK) climbed 33.4% in August, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, after the operational intelligence platform specialist beat quarterly expectations for the 15th consecutive time.
Splunk stock achieved modest gains for the first few weeks of last month, then popped more than 16% on Aug. 24, 2018, alone -- the first trading day after its fiscal second-quarter 2019 results hit the wires.
IMAGE SOURCE: SPLUNK.
So what
More specifically, Splunk saw its revenue last quarter climb 38.6% year over year to $388.3 million -- far above its own guidance provided in May for the top line to arrive between $356 million and $358 million. Trending toward the bottom line, Splunk's adjusted (non-GAAP) operating margin was 2.9%, also above guidance for 2%, and adjusted net income of $11.7 million, or $0.08 per share.
What's more, despite Splunk's habit of underpromising and overdelivering, most analysts were only looking for earnings of $0.05 per share on revenue closer to the high end of its original outlook.
"The rapid digitization of every organization, coupled with Splunk's increasing innovation, is driving our continued momentum," added Splunk CEO Doug Merritt.
Now what
Splunk also offered fiscal third-quarter guidance for revenue between $430 million and $431 million, the low end of which stood around $2 million above Wall Street's consensus prediction at the time.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that Splunk has only continued to drift higher in the days since last month's quarterly report. And if it continues to deliver results that not only beat expectations, but do so by such a wide margin, I suspect the stock has plenty of room to run going forward.
