Netezza (NYSE:NZ) is in the red-hot market of data warehousing, which allows companies to manage their complex digital infrastructures. At the same time, the company faces megarivals such as Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), Hewlett-Packard (NASDAQ:HPQ), and NCR's (NYSE:NCR) Teradata. But as seen with last week's fiscal second-quarter report, Netezza knows how to deal with the pressure.
Revenue surged 60% to $28.4 million, and there was a 12% sequential increase. In the quarter, Netezza landed eight new customers. This might seem meager, but keep in mind that the company's customer total is 109, and the average contract size is $2.3 million. On the conference call, Netezza indicated that these contracts often lead to "substantial potential" for more product sales, and of course, there are the maintenance and service fees.
Because of the healthy growth, Netezza is getting traction on the bottom line. The net loss for Q2 was $1 million, or $0.19 per share, which was a $900,000 improvement from the same period a year ago. Cash flow from operations was about $3.9 million.
On the conference call, management also emphasized that it sees continued strong demand. For example, the company projects full-year revenue of $114 million-$116 million.
Based on this, the company is trading at about 7.8 times revenue. This is not out of line compared to other high-flying infrastructure players such as Data Domain (NASDAQ:DDUP) and Aruba Networks (NASDAQ:ARUN).
But the sales cycles are long, and competition is still a big factor. If Netezza continues to pick up key wins, it will certainly get the attention of its rivals. Also keep in mind that the company went public in late June, and that transition can be tough. In other words, I still think there's lots of risk with this one for now.
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Fool contributor Tom Taulli, author of The Complete M&A Handbook, does not own shares mentioned in this article. He is currently ranked 2,509 out of more than 60,000 players in CAPS. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
