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Why Splunk Stock Popped Today

By Steve Symington – Updated Dec 3, 2018 at 2:29PM

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Here's what shareholders need to know.

What happened

Shares of Splunk (SPLK -1.06%) jumped 9.9% on Friday after the operational-intelligence platform company announced stronger-than-expected fiscal third-quarter 2019 results. In fact, this marked Splunk's 27th straight quarter of exceeding top-line guidance.

Revenue soared 40.4% year over year, to $481 million, well above the outlook provided in August for between $430 million and $432 million. And on the bottom line, Splunk generated adjusted earnings of $57.6 million, or $0.38 per share, beating most analysts' models by $0.06 per share.

Splunk logo overlaying flowing streams of random text data on a blue background.

IMAGE SOURCE: SPLUNK

So what

During the subsequent conference call, management credited Splunk's growth to both new customers -- it added more than 500 new enterprise customers this quarter, after all, including the likes of Jabil, Softbank, and Norfolk Southern -- and existing clients expanding their adoption of its platform with newer data analytics and machine-learning features.

"The strength of our results is a testament to Splunk's pioneering innovation and rising demand for data-driven insights across all industries," added Splunk CEO Doug Merritt.

Now what

If that wasn't enough, Splunk called for revenue in the current (fiscal fourth) quarter to arrive at roughly $560 million, up 33.4% year over year and comfortably above consensus predictions for $557 million. Splunk also raised its full-fiscal-year 2019 guidance for revenue to be approximately $1.74 billion (up from its old target of $1.685 billion), and increased its fiscal 2020 revenue outlook by $150 million, to $2.15 billion.

When you consider Splunk's straightforward beat-and-raise performance along with the stock still reeling from a largely unjustified drop last month as the broader markets pulled back from record highs, it should come as no surprise that shares popped in response today.

Editor's note: This article has been corrected to note this was Splunk's 27th straight quarter of beating its guidance.

Steve Symington has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Splunk. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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