Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of Splunk, Inc. (SPLK) jumped nearly 23% Friday after the data analysis software specialist reported better-than-expected results.
So what: Quarterly revenue rose 51% year over year to $78.6 million, which translated to breakeven non-GAAP earnings per share. By contrast, analysts were expecting the company to report a $0.01 per share adjusted net loss on sales of $71.09 million.
In addition, Splunk provided strong forward guidance, calling for Q4 revenue between $88 million and $90 million, and full-year fiscal 2014 revenue between $291 million and $293 million. For those of you keeping track, that's a big increase over Splunk's previous full-year guidance, which it raised after last quarter's solid report to between $275 million and $281 million.
Now what: While those results were great, I'm personally still wary of this yet-to-be-profitable company's outsized valuation, which currently pegs its market cap at a whopping $7.78 billion. That's more than 28 times this year's expected sales, so with shares up more than 150% year to date, I'm fine waiting until Splunk can prove it has what it takes to sustain this momentum over the long term.
