Anaplan Posts Larger-than-Expected Q1 Loss; Shares Plunge 13%

Anaplan Inc. (PLAN), a cloud-based platform company, reported a wider-than-expected loss in Q1. Meanwhile, revenues beat analysts’ expectations. The company also announced the retirement of its current CFO. Shares plunged 13% to close at $49.61 on May 27.

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Revenue for the quarter came in at $129.83 million, surpassing the Street’s estimates of $127.09 million, and surged 25% year-over-year.

The company reported a loss of $0.10 per share, the same as the prior-year period. Analysts expected the company to report a loss of $0.09 per share.

Subscription revenue was up 26% to $118.34 million and Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) stood at $832.3 million, up 29% year-over-year. (See Anaplan stock analysis on TipRanks)

Frank Calderoni, CEO of the company said, “We started our fiscal year with a solid first quarter as we are seeing the need for enterprise-wide planning increase globally. Our results continue to build on our market leadership and the growing interest in digitizing planning across all functions.”

Based on the solid Q1 performance, the company gave guidance for Q2 and revised guidance for 2022.

In the upcoming quarter, the company projects revenue in the range of $133.5 million to $ 134.5 million, as opposed to the Street’s estimates of $132.43 million. The company forecast billings to be in the range of $138 million to $140 million.

For the full year 2022, revenue is expected in the range of $555 and $560 million, up from earlier estimates of $550 to $555 million. Analysts expect annual revenue of $553.75 million.

Following the Q1 results, Needham analyst Scott Berg assigned a Buy rating to the stock with a price target of $95, which implies a substantial upside potential of 91.5% to current levels.

Berg said, “We view the business momentum as generally positive due to our expectations for our entire software universe that improving enterprise segment sales would be a multi-quarter progression and not the immediate big-bang apparently expected in 1Q. We view solid acceleration in the cRPO metric against more difficult comps, than the billings metric, as a better sales metric to measure current trends. As new logos return in 2H with recently released budgets and larger deals, we expect further acceleration in sales metrics.”

Overall, the stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 6 Buys and 1 Hold. The average analyst price target of $76.86 implies 54.9% upside potential from current levels. Shares have lost 29% year-to-date.

TipRanks data shows that financial blogger opinions are 83% Bullish on PLAN, compared to a sector average of 69%.