Tag Archives: request

Tableau Software Stock Crashes On Weak Guidance, Amazon Threat

Tableau Software ( DATA ) late Thursday posted Q4 earnings minus items and sales that beat expectations, but shares were down more than 35% in after-hours action amid signs that  Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Microsoft and others were grabbing Big Data market share. Tableau’s outlook for the current quarter missed Wall Street views, at least one analyst said Q4 licensing revenue missed and at least one analyst said the Q4 sales beat lagged many analyst expectations. Tableau reported earnings minus items of 33 cents, down 21% from the year-earlier quarter but well ahead of the 16 cents expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. But Tableau’s net loss, using generally accepted accounting principles, soared to 57 cents a share from 27 cents. In its earnings release, the maker of Big Data analytics software said its Q4 “tax expense was $34.1 million due to the recognition of a valuation allowance. We believe that it is more likely than not that the benefit from our U.S. federal and state deferred tax assets will not be realized. In recognition of this risk, we have provided a valuation allowance of $46.7 million on the deferred tax assets relating to these jurisdictions.” Q4 revenue rose 42% to $202.8 million, $2 million above analyst estimates, but “the buy side was looking for sales upside of $20 million-plus,” William Blair analyst Bhavan Suri wrote in a research note emailed after the earnings release. License revenue rose 31% to $133.1 million in Q4, but Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry said the missed Wall Street expectations and indicated the “market is moving away from (Tableau) products, to alternatives like (Amazon.com’s) AWS QuickSight,” financial news site Benzinga reported. Tableau also gave weak revenue guidance for Q1 and 2016. In the company’s earnings conference call with analysts, Tableau CFO Tom Walker guided Q1 to an 8- to 12-cent loss per share minus items, worse than the 6-cent gain expected by analysts. Walker guided revenue at $160 million to $165 million, up 27% at the high end but well below the $179.5 million analysts expected. For the year, Tableau sees revenue of $830 million to $850 million, up 30% at the high end but short of the $871 million analysts expected. Its EPS outlook also missed. In an email, Summit Research analyst Srini Nandury reminded IBD that he’d warned that “Tableau is perceived as expensive.” in a post-Q3 research note. “We have data and have heard anecdotally that the Tableau solution is the most expensive in the market when compared with” products from rivals Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Qlik Technologies ( QLIK. ) “It would not be a surprise if (Microsoft’s) PowerBI finds greater traction with Excel users, precisely the same users Tableau is targeting,” Nandury said. In a subsequent phone interview, Nandury told IBD “the company is going to remain in the penalty box for a long time to come, basically because they blew up in such a massive scale. They have not only guided down Q1 but they also guided down the full year. “Microsoft is giving away their software for free. Amazon is coming up with their own … our thesis on the stock has always been that Tableau is a one-trick pony.” In a Jan. 15 research note, Nomura analyst Aashiv Shah warned of competition faced by Tableau and Qlik from Microsoft: “Competition is increasing, with (Qlik) partners noting increased customer interest in Microsoft’s Power BI, which is a freemium product and sells at a cheaper price compared to Qlik and Tableau. While Power BI continues to lag Qlik and Tableau in terms of user experience and functionality, its lower price point could eventually lead to pricing pressure in the analytics market.” Tableau stock was 36% in after-hours trading, after rising nearly 3% in Thursday’s regular session. Tableau also competes with much-larger  Oracle ( ORCL ), Splunk ( SPLK )  and others. Shares of both Splunk and Qlik were down 11% after-hours Tableau is spending heavy to compete. Research and development costs in Q4 soared 155% vs. the year-earlier quarter, to $17.9 million, while sales and marketing costs rose 135%, to $13.9 million. The company said it hired more than 1,000 employees in 2015, bringing its headcount to more than 3,000. It also opened seven new offices in the year, bringing the number of total offices to 16 worldwide. “In Q4, a record 3,600 new customer accounts chose Tableau, bringing our total to more than 39,000 worldwide,” Tableau CEO Christian Chabot said in the earnings release. “This speaks to the immense popularity of Tableau’s products and continued strong demand from customers around the world.”

Valeant Slammed, Shkreli Calls Congress ‘Imbeciles’ in Tweet

Members of Congress strongly criticized Valeant Pharmaceuticals International ( VRX ) and Turing Pharmaceuticals, accusing the companies of dramatically increasing the price of drugs. The hearing in Washington was heated and at times a puzzling spectacle, with controversial pharma executive Martin Shkreli smirking throughout but refusing to testify after invoking the Fifth Amendment, his lawyer being asked at one point to stay seated, and Shkreli later taking to Twitter to insult lawmakers. With Shkreli declining to comment at the hearing itself, lawmakers used the opportunity to lambaste Turing, Shkreli’s former company, and Valeant about their drug price increases. “They bought them, jacked up the prices, took as much money as they could out of the pockets of patients, hospitals, and others, and then put those funds into their own coffers,” said Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At one point, Shkreli cracked a smile midway through Cummings’s remarks about how the company’s price increases hurt patients. “It’s not funny, Mr. Shkreli, people are dying,” Cummings said at the packed hearing room in Washington. Shkreli is facing federal fraud charges unrelated to Turing. He has maintained his innocence. Turing and Valeant have become the poster companies for an industry that has been increasingly in the spotlight in Washington for raising some prices so high that they’re out of reach for many patients and straining state and federal budgets. Shkreli was excused after his testimony. Brafman, speaking outside the hearing room, said that Shkreli would have liked to talk. “This was a frustrating morning for us,” Brafman said, “frustrating because many of the things said in this hearing were just not accurate.” He said that some of Shkreli’s demeanor at the hearing was “nervous energy,” and that it was unfair that Turing had been singled out. The “priority is to resolve the criminal case,” Brafman said. “I think at the end of this story he is a hero.” In fact, Shkreli did comment on Twitter, minutes after leaving the hearing. “Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government,” he said. Different Than Turing Valeant interim CEO Howard Schiller, in prepared testimony released yesterday, explained why the company decided to increase the prices of two cardiac drugs by 525% and 212%, and promised to end an era of sharp hikes. Valeant’s CEO Mike Pearson is out on medical leave. “While, like most other pharmaceutical companies, we will from time to time raise prices, I expect those price increases to be within industry norms and much more modest than the ones that drew this Committee’s legitimate concern,” Schiller said in his prepared remarks. “Where we’re made mistakes, we’re listening and we’re changing,” he told the committee at the hearing. Schiller was asked how his company was different than Turing. Schiller began to answer, “Valeant is a global company” mentioning the number of offices they have before Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, cut him off, saying they were asking about the company’s strategy, not its scale. “The only strategy I saw was, ‘Let’s increase the price of the drugs,”’ Maloney said. Chaffetz blamed the Food and Drug Administration for not working fast enough to approve generic drugs, saying the agency was “drowning in a backlog” of applications. “I believe that the FDA has failed to meet its statutory responsibilities,” Chaffetz said. “If somebody increases the price of a prescription drug that’s going to invite more competition but if that competition can’t get approval from the FDA there will be no competition.” Janet Woodcock, an FDA official, said the agency was working quickly through the list of applications and that the backlog wasn’t as bad as Chaffetz made it seem. “The generic backlog was a big problem,” she said. “This was ultimately fixed” but takes time to implement.

iRobot Sells Military Robot Division To Focus On Home Robots

Bedford, Mass.-based iRobot ( IRBT ) is selling its defense and security robot business to a private equity firm so it can focus on its core home robot business, best known for the Roomba vacuum cleaner. Arlington Capital Partners of Chevy Chase, Md., agreed to pay up to $45 million for the division, which makes four classes of robots: the FirstLook, SUGV, PackBot and Kobra. Those robots are used by the U.S. military and other organizations for reconnaissance, bomb disposal and other critical missions. The deal includes contingent payments based on the unit achieving certain milestones. IRobot has been under pressure from activist investor Red Mountain Capital Partners to divest the military robot business to improve its operating focus. The transaction is expected to close in the next few months. Also Thursday, iRobot reaffirmed its fourth-quarter earnings guidance provided on Oct. 20. It expects results to be at the high end of its previously given range. IRobot is scheduled to report Q4 earnings next Wednesday after the market close. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect iRobot to earn 57 cents a share on sales of $202.6 million. On a year-over-year basis, earnings per share are forecast to rise 84% with sales up 27%. IRobot CEO Colin Angle said the company had a successful holiday season, led by the Roomba 980 Series robot. “Sell-through across iRobot’s Roomba family was greater than we had anticipated in the U.S. despite reported weakness in general retail. Likewise, demand in China was very strong throughout the fourth quarter,” Angle said in a statement . Plus, iRobot said it will expand its current share repurchase initiative by $65 million, including the expected proceeds from the transaction, bringing the total 2016 program to more than $100 million. IRobot stock rose 6.1% to 34.41 on the stock market today . Arlington Capital said the iRobot military robot business will operate as an independent company with a new name. In a statement , Arlington Capital managing partner Peter Manos said his firm will help the new company expand its presence in defense, security and industrial robotics “through organic investment and acquisitions.”