What happened
Shares of PagerDuty (PD +1.50%) were moving higher today after the software company announced a new hire that marks a shift in its sales strategy.
The stock closed up 3.4% on the news.
Image source: PagerDuty.
So what
In a press release this morning, PagerDuty, which provides cloud-based software that helps companies monitor their own tech stack, said it had hired a new vice president of global partners and alliances, Timm Hoyt.
Hoyt will be in charge of increasing partnership revenue, a key channel for the company as it recently announced a transition to a partner-first sales strategy. Hoyt comes from Druva, another cloud software company, where he helped drive the percentage of sales from partners from 9% to 80%.
Dave Justice, the company's chief revenue officer, said, "PagerDuty sits at the center of the digital ecosystem and partnerships are critical as they allow our customers to integrate our platform with their entire digital operations, improving overall performance and working effectively across teams, no matter their preferred working tool."
Hoyt said, "As companies move rapidly to digital first, PagerDuty is essential for helping businesses handle any urgent mission critical need right away. I couldn't be more excited to join PagerDuty to lead its partner organization and continue to empower and incentivize the partners in our ecosystem."
PagerDuty's gains also come on a day when growth stocks largely gained. ARK Innovation ETF, Cathie Wood's growth ETF that owns shares of PagerDuty, finished up 1.4%.
Now what
PagerDuty's growth has generally lagged behind that of many of its cloud software peers, so pivoting to a partner-first sales model may help the company accelerate growth. Last year, revenue rose 28.4% to $213.6 million, a solid clip, but one with room for improvement considering the tailwinds from the pandemic and the "digital transformation" across the corporate world.
PagerDuty will report its first-quarter earnings on June 3. Analysts are expecting revenue of $62 million, up 24% from the quarter a year ago, and it sees its adjusted per-share loss widening from $0.04 to $0.09.
