It's been a great year for Qlik Technologies (QLIK +0.00%). The stock has handily outperformed the S&P 500 during 2015, appreciating about 27% versus a 5% decline for the S&P 500 during the same period.
The stock's excellent performance follows a year of better-than-expected growth as the business intelligence analytics company transitions to a multi-product offering. In an interview at a 2015 Global Technology Conference last week, Qlik CEO Lars Bjork explained some of the drivers behind this recent success and provided a glimpse of the company's outlook. Here are some of the most notable quotes from the interview.
Qlik Sense. Source. Qlik Technologies.
Modern analytics is now a "must"
Modern analytics platforms, like Qlik's QlikView and Qlik Sense, which emphasize user interaction and visualization to help take businesses on a journey of enhanced and informed decision-making, is now a must-have for organizations in order to compete effectively, Bjork asserted during the interview. He credited this shift in sentiment in favor of modern analytics as one of the key reasons for the company's growing sales during the past 12 months.
"You're more and more beginning to see the client base -- or customers -- realizing that it's no longer an option to have, or not have, a modern analytics platform," Bjork said. "If you want to be cutting edge in your industry, you just have to have it -- it's a must."
Qlik Sense will likely be a bigger sales driver next year
While Qlik Sense has certainly helped drive sales higher for Qlik recently, the company has experienced "ongoing healthy demand for QlikView," as Bjork noted in Qlik's second-quarter earnings release. Pairing momentum for Qlik Sense and continued demand for QlikView, the company is experiencing accelerating license and total revenue growth.
But the momentum from Sense sales could pick up some more here. And this is why: During the interview, Bjork said Qlik management has been surprised at how few clients have begun transitioning from its original core product, QlikView, to Qlik Sense, which is a better product. But this lower-than-expected migration rate doesn't reflect customer disappointment in Qlik Sense, Bjork emphasized. On the contrary, the lack of transitioning customers reflects high satisfaction with QlikView.
Going forward, however, Bjork says the company is preparing for higher demand for migration next year -- and it wants to make the transition go smoothly.
"So, the intention here is: Further simplify the migration for those that do decide to migrate," Bjork said.
Because they're perfectly happy with where they are with QlikView. They might add Sense for other use cases and other users, but very, very few have. ... So, we are going to -- besides [offering the same Qlik Sense engine in the upcoming QlikView 12 update] -- we are going to further offer more migration tools [for switching from QlikView to Qlik Sense].
There's upside potential with existing customers
One of the key benefits of Qlik Sense is that it is opening up the opportunity for fresh expansion in its existing client accounts. This is a notable opportunity when it comes to large accounts.
Most of our large accounts are not fully penetrated. ... There are some of those that we have penetrated fully, but they are a minority.
Of course, added client penetration doesn't require adoption of Qlik Sense; Bjork said some of its customers are simply looking for a further rollout of QlikView with different use cases and users.
For investors following Qlik Technologies, it's worth tuning into the full interview, which can be found on the company's Events and Presentations page of its website.
