What happened
Shares of Appian (APPN -0.89%) were moving higher today after the provider of low-code software posted strong results in its fourth-quarter earnings report, topping estimates across the board.
As of 10:20 a.m. ET, the stock was up 11.4%.
Image source: Appian.
So what
Appian's cloud subscription revenue, which it considers to be its most important metric, grew 39% to $51.2 million, and overall revenue, which includes term licenses and professional services, rose 29% to $105 million, easily beating the analyst consensus at $95.3 million.
Net retention rate was 116%, showing existing customers spent 16% more on Appian products, and the number of customers spending more than $1 million annually rose from 55 to 75, a sign that it's both landing bigger customers and persuading existing customers to ramp up spending.
On the bottom line, Appian's adjusted loss per share expanded from $0.03 to $0.16, but that still topped expectations at a per-share loss of $0.23.
CEO Matt Calkins said, "Appian cloud subscription revenue grew 39% for the full year. We enter 2022 with an accelerating business, a unified low-code platform, a growing ecosystem, and happy customers."
The company recently launched Appian Process Mining, following its acquisition of Lana Labs last year, adding another valuable element to its low-code platform, and it became the first low-code platform to receive government provisional authorization at impact level 5, which will help it better serve the Department of Defense.
Now what
Looking ahead, Appian also gave better-than-expected guidance for 2022. The company sees revenue increasing 20%-21% to $444 million-$446 million for the full year, ahead of estimates at $424.3 million. For the current quarter, it called for 19%-22% revenue growth to $106 million-$108 million, which compared to the consensus at $102.7 million.
The opportunity in low-code software is significant, and Appian continues to deliver steady growth. After a pullback last year, the stock looks like a much better value at a price-to-sales ratio of about 9 based on this year's forecast.
