Storage management expert Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) just saw its shares spike 30% overnight. The company's fourth-quarter report ripped right through analyst estimates with $107 million of top-line revenue boiling down to $0.09 of adjusted earnings per share.
CEO David Flynn is not one to mince words. Where other leaders might just celebrate rampant growth, Flynn turned his eye to the future right away: "We believe we are still in the early stages of demonstrating the transformative potential of software defined storage solutions that deliver greater performance and efficiency for customers at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems," he said. In plain English, he sees explosive growth ahead for more efficient data management systems.
The company is getting by with a little help from its friends. Leading system builders Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), and IBM (NYSE: IBM) all bundle Fusion-io storage systems with their own servers and bulk storage units. All three tested and then launched new Fusion-io products this summer. And it doesn't stop there: Fusion-io added server upstart, nee networking giant, Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) to its roster in June. Any system builder worth mentioning is now aboard the Fusion-io bandwagon. Revenue from the company's "core customers" more than doubled this year, and the two largest partners represented 55% of Fusion-io's total sales.
Flynn expects the collaborative party to continue. Sales are projected to grow as much as 50% again in 2013 with stable margins and modest share dilution.
Fusion-io has kept pace with the general market in 2012 through a series of wild price swings. The company plays an increasingly important role in the big-data trend and should be able to climb dramatically from here. In fact, I'm so convinced of a bright future for this stock that I just opened a bullish CAPScall on Fusion-io -- today's price jump notwithstanding. Fools don't play the market-timing game, you know.
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