What happened
Shares of Anaplan (PLAN) rose as much as 17.1% on Wednesday morning, driven by an impressive second-quarter earnings report. By 1 p.m. EDT, the provider of cloud-based business planning tools had seen its stock calm down to a 12% gain.
So what
Anaplan's second-quarter sales rose 35% year over year to $144.3 million. On the bottom line, net losses widened from $0.04 to $0.09 per share. Your average analyst would have settled for a $0.14 loss per share on revenue near $134 million. The company also issued revenue guidance well above the current analyst views for the third quarter and the full year.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
The company delivered strong sales growth across all of its geographical segments thanks to rising customer demand for advanced business planning software. Anaplan has also introduced several new features for its namesake planning platform in recent months, helping the company land numerous new customers with annual contracts in the million-dollar range.
I'm not surprised to see Anaplan firing on all cylinders as the global economy starts to exit the pandemic. CEO Frank Calderoni previously served as the chief financial officer of networking giant Cisco Systems and then for open-source software veteran Red Hat. Calderoni has a proven history of managing technology companies with global footprints and tremendous growth prospects, laying the groundwork for IBM's eventual $34 billion buyout of Red Hat. Quality leadership is a key ingredient of any successful business, and Anaplan checks that crucial box with an extra-wide Sharpie.
The young company is off to a market-beating start, posting a 177% gain in two years versus a 64% increase in the S&P 500 market barometer. I'm keeping a close and curious eye on this high-growth tech stock.
