What happened
Shares of Ping Identity (PING) have gotten demolished today, down by 23% as of 11:05 a.m. EST, after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings. The results missed expectations, and Ping's guidance was also lacking.
So what
Revenue in the fourth quarter came in at $63.3 million, below the consensus estimate of $68.9 million in sales. That resulted in adjusted earnings per share of $0.09, which was on target with what analysts were looking for. The technology company, which provides identity access management services to enterprise customers, said annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased 15% to $259.1 million.
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"We exceeded our expectations in the quarter related to our Annual Recurring Revenue -- the key measure of our growth," CEO Andre Durand said in a statement. "With the growth and rising demand for our cloud offerings, we now have more than half of our customers accessing our solutions in the cloud and a rapidly growing portion of our ARR from SaaS" (software as a service).
Now what
Guidance also came in below Wall Street's forecasts. Revenue in the first quarter is expected to be in the range of $61.5 million to $63.5 million, meaningfully below the $67.2 million in sales that analysts are modeling for. That should result in free cash flow of $12 million to $14 million and ARR of $263 million to $264 million. For full year 2021, Ping's outlook calls for revenue of $255 million to $265 million, compared with the market's expectations of $287.6 million.
