The stock market went through a reversal in sentiment on Thursday, and the downbeat mood on Wall Street looked ready to continue on Friday morning. Stock index futures were broadly lower in the premarket session, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI -0.28%) expected to fall about a third of a percent and other indexes seeing slightly larger possible declines.
Despite the somewhat gloomy atmosphere, a pair of stocks in the cloud computing space posted significant gains. Cloudflare (NET 2.26%) and Alteryx (AYX) address different parts of the software-as-a-service arena, but they both benefited from favorable financial reports that suggest a brighter future ahead. Read on to learn more about what Cloudflare and Alteryx said to their shareholders and what it could mean for their cloud stock peers.
Cloudflare gets great growth
Shares of Cloudflare jumped 11% in premarket trading Friday morning. The internet security and reliability specialist reported fourth-quarter financial results that confirmed its continuing growth trajectory.
Cloudflare said that revenue rose 42% year over year to $275 million in the fourth quarter, closing a year of 49% sales growth. Adjusted net income came in at $21.6 million, which was a substantial improvement over its roughly breakeven results in the fourth quarter of 2021 and worked out to $0.06 per share. Free cash flow nearly quadrupled from year-ago levels.
Operationally, Cloudflare continued to attract high-value customers. The cloud stock now has more than 2,000 enterprise customers spending more than $100,000 annually on its service, and co-founder/CEO Matthew Prince said that the company signed a record number of new deals worth more than $500,000.
Investors also liked the guidance that Cloudflare gave. For the full year in 2023, the software provider sees sales of $1.33 billion to $1.342 billion, which would be 36% to 38% higher than Cloudflare's final figures for 2022. Adjusted earnings of $0.15 to $0.16 per share for the year would still leave the cloud stock at a high valuation in some investors' eyes, but the evidence that Cloudflare's customers are continuing to spend on its software even as they pull back in other areas got a good reception from its shareholders.
Alteryx closes a strong 2022
Shares of Alteryx also got a nice boost, rising 10% early Friday. The provider of data analytics services also gave investors an upbeat assessment in its latest financial report.
Alteryx's fourth-quarter results showed accelerating growth. Revenue jumped 73% year over year to $301 million, closing 2022 with full-year sales gains of 60%. Adjusted net income soared more than fivefold to $62 million, working out to $0.84 per share. The company ended 2022 with $833.5 million in annual recurring revenue, which was 31% higher than it had been 12 months earlier.
Several of Alteryx's key metrics performed well. Dollar-based net expansion rates of 121% showed continued loyalty among clients. Alteryx finished the year with more than 8,350 customers, including over 140 that spend at least $1 million annually on it software platform. It also more than doubled the number of million-dollar contracts it signed during 2022 compared to 2021's final figures.
Alteryx expects to see full-year 2023 revenue of $980 million to $990 million, which would be just 15% to 16% higher than 2022's final figure. Earnings of $0.36 to $0.46 per share would be a nicer boost, though, and investors like the idea of the company hopefully turning profitable for good.