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 operational intelligence software specialist Splunk (SPLK) plunged 18% Friday despite its better than expected first-quarter results.
So what: Quarterly revenue rose 50% year over year to $85.9 million. Meanwhile, adjusted operating margin was negative 4.2%, which translated to an adjusted loss of $0.04 per share. Analysts on average, were looking for a wider loss of $0.06 per share on lower sales of $80.74 million.
Splunk expects current-quarter revenue between $92 million and $94 million, with adjusted operating margin between negative 2% and negative 4%. Analysts, on average, were modeling a second-quarter loss of $0.02 per share on sales of $91.6 million.
Finally -- and this explains today's pullback -- Splunk raised its full fiscal-year revenue guidance to between $402 million and $410 million, up from its previous guidance for fiscal 2015 sales of $400 million. Curiously, though, adjusted operating margin is still expected to be roughly zero. Analysts, for their part, were already expecting a breakeven year on sales of $406.9 million.
Now what: Splunk certainly wasn't kidding a few weeks ago when it said investors should expect "strong fiscal first quarter FY15 results." But it's obvious the market was hoping for a bigger guidance increase based on analysts' full-year expectation going into the report. And with shares of Splunk priced for perfection at roughly 19.5 times trailing 12-month sales and 300 times the next year's estimated earnings, investors were understandably demanding blockbuster results on every metric. As a result, while this certainly doesn't mean Splunk's long-term story is broken, I have no problem continuing to watch this one from the sidelines.
