What happened
Shares of Anaplan (PLAN) soared as much as 30.4% higher on Wednesday morning, following a strong second-quarter earnings report.
So what
Anaplan's sales rose 26% year over year to $106.5 million. Adjusted bottom-line losses decreased from $0.12 to $0.04 per diluted share. Your average analyst had expected a net loss of $0.12 per share on revenues near $103.5 million.
The provider of cloud-based business planning tools and services also set a third-quarter revenue target at approximately $110 million, well ahead of the Street consensus at $108 million.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
Anaplan saw a strong interest in its business planning services from large enterprises during the COVID-19 health crisis. In the earnings call, CEO Frank Calderoni highlighted big contract wins with massive companies in the retail, healthcare, and technology sectors.
"What stands out to me is the rapid change that the global pandemic has forced upon businesses. This endless pace of change has become unrelenting, and the need for a connected platform is playing out," Calderoni said. "Customers are choosing us because of the value that they see in the platform."
We're looking at a classic growth stock here, exploring a large target market under highly qualified leadership. Don't forget that Calderoni served as the CFO of networking giant Cisco Systems (CSCO -0.72%) for more than a decade before steering open-source software veteran Red Hat into a $34 billion buyout by IBM (IBM -9.59%). This guy sure knows his way around enterprise-class business deals.
The stock is nearly back to February's all-time highs again, having posted a 137% bounce from the market bottom in March.
