If you think you spend too much time glued to your phone or computer -- checking social media feeds, shopping, paying bills, or learning a new skill -- you're not alone. Worldwide, people with internet access, on average, spent about seven hours online every day in 2021.
While growing digitization is bringing the world to our fingertips, it is also producing massive amounts of new data every day. That large amount of data needs to be stored, logically connected, and analyzed in a timely manner so enterprises can make business-critical decisions. Two companies that are playing a pivotal role in helping businesses manage this data are MongoDB (MDB 4.33%) and Snowflake (SNOW 3.14%). Let's review why investing in these two companies can produce stellar results for long-term investors.
MongoDB: Central to the operation of modern digital enterprises
Every interaction on the internet is enabled behind the scenes by a collection of software applications. And at the heart of those applications is a database like MongoDB that keeps track of real-time data such as consumer profiles, product orders, etc. In a digital-first world, MongoDB plays an essential role for businesses.
MongoDB's relatively modern "NoSQL" design paradigm -- significantly more flexible and scalable relative to the traditional "relational", or tabular, databases -- simplifies the overall app development process, allowing the developers to adopt the ever-evolving requirement of businesses. The bottom line is faster speed and lower cost to develop and enhance software.
MongoDB is also cloud-agnostic: Clients can set up MongoDB databases in a cloud environment of their choice, such as Amazon's Amazon Web Services or Alphabet's Google Cloud Platform. With MongoDB's full-service cloud offering, Atlas, the company is eliminating the operational complexity for its clients so they can focus on what's truly important for their business rather than having to spend time managing databases.
MongoDB has grown in popularity, and its revenue in the recently reported first quarter of fiscal 2023 (ending on April 30, 2022), reached $285.4 million, growing 57% year over year. And that was higher than the past two quarters when revenue jumped 56% and 50%. From fiscal 2017 through fiscal 2022, MongoDB has grown its revenue over sevenfold, from $115 million to $874 million. And the revenue contributed by Atlas -- the primary driver of the business at this point -- continues to rise at a very impressive rate. Atlas revenue in the recent quarter surged 82% and now makes up 60% of total revenue, which bodes really well for MongoDB.
NoSQL databases are becoming increasingly popular, and MongoDB is a top choice for developers. With growing digitization and the need to effectively manage the increasing amounts of data, IDC estimates the database software market to grow from $85 billion in 2022 to $138 billion in 2026. With management forecasting revenue of about $1.18 billion for fiscal 2023, MongoDB has a significant runway in front of it. It's probably not an exaggeration to think MongoDB could be a multi-bagger over the long run.
Snowflake: Making businesses smarter with its one-stop-shop data platform
While MongoDB is primarily helping businesses to manage real-time data, Snowflake's data cloud is predominantly used to assemble large amounts of current and historical data sets from disparate sources into a singular cohesive view to analyze business performance and gain insights to make future decisions. A task that enterprises have historically struggled in a big way to accomplish.
Like MongoDB, Snowflake can be set up in any cloud environment of the customer's choice. And besides that flexibility, Snowflake is also highly scalable. Customers don't have to worry about slowdowns in performance when they add more users -- the platform automatically assigns more computational resources instantaneously to support the increased workload.
Furthermore, with Snowflake's usage-based pricing, customers pay only for the database and computational resources they actually use, allowing them to manage costs effectively. Finally, in addition to a large suite of its own data tools, Snowflake's platform easily integrates with products from over 425 technology companies, so customers can mine, analyze, and visualize data with the tools they're most comfortable with.
Customers are loving Snowflake's platform, and it showed in the company's exceptional net retention rate -- the measure of how much existing clients spent over the previous year -- of 174%, reported for the first quarter of fiscal 2023 (ending on April 30, 2022). And this wasn't an unusual occurrence for the company. Over the past four fiscal years, Snowflake has averaged an annual net retention rate of over 168%, which is a testament to its superior product and execution. The company grew its revenue by 84% over a year ago in the recent quarter and has increased revenue by a whopping 132% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from fiscal 2019 through fiscal 2022. The company is also steadily improving profitability and turned free-cash-flow positive in fiscal 2022.
In a world where enterprises are struggling to make sense of the mountains of data produced every day, Snowflake is uniquely positioned to offer just the right solution. The big demand, a highly coveted product, and outstanding execution set up Snowflake really well for long-term success. For patient investors, now may be a great time to make Snowflake a part of their portfolio.
