What happened
Shares of Nutanix (NTNX 1.81%) were down about 12.4% at 3:30 p.m. EST Monday. There was no company-specific news affecting the hyperconverged-infrastructure company. Instead, a steep stock market sell-off seems to be the culprit.
So what
The Nasdaq Composite was down nearly 2.6% 30 minutes before market close. That decline dragged down plenty of high-flying tech stocks, including Nutanix.
Image source: Getty Images.
Not helping the cause is Nutanix's optimistic valuation. The company was valued at nearly $8 billion before Monday's slump, which works out to a price-to-sales ratio of nearly 7. Nutanix is not even in the ballpark of being profitable, losing $330 million on a GAAP basis on $1.2 billion of revenue over the past 12 months.
The company's subscription business is growing quickly, with subscription revenue more than doubling on a year-over-year basis in the latest quarter. But that rapid growth hasn't saved Nutanix from the ongoing stock market sell-off.
Now what
Nutanix reported its fiscal first-quarter results in late November, beating analyst estimates for both revenue and earnings. A bounce in the stock was short-lived. Nutanix is now down about 40% from its all-time high, and there could be more pain ahead if the stock market continues to slump, regardless of the quality of the company's quarterly results.
