2021 to be a year of heavy investments for Alteryx: CFO Kevin Rubin

Data science company Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) ended fiscal 2020 with a lot of activity. The company inked various partnerships, including a key strategic alliance with Snowflake, as well as the appointments of multiple C-level executives.

And yet, the stock failed to pull off as investors remained concerned about the weakness in outlook provided by the management. For full year 2021, Alteryx had provided a rather wide adjusted EPS guidance range of a loss of 7 cents per share to a profit of 7 cents per share.  In an interview with AlphaStreet, CFO Kevin Rubin said there is little reason for concern as the company has historically demonstrated a financial model that is powerful and able to generate cash flow.

“In terms of puts and takes, 2021 is a transition year and a year of heavy investment. We are making the intentional decision this year to invest in aspects of the business that will provide long term shareholder value,” the CFO said.  Rubin added that an official cost-optimization initiative is not in the cards, as the company has historically been financially disciplined.   

Partnerships to drive value   

The management feels a partner ecosystem is key to scaling up the business going forward. This is evident from the two technical partnerships formed recently with cloud-based data-warehousing company Snowflake and Adobe UiPath, a vendor of robotic process automation.  

Speaking on the Snowflake partnership, Rubin pointed out that since there are many common customers, they expect the integration of these technologies in the ecosystem. “This is just another level of deep integration that will allow Alteryx users to take advantage of some of the capabilities and power of Snowflake by allowing them to push the business logic of their workflows into Snowflake and leverage their compute. Our ability to seamlessly integrate with technologies like Snowflake have certainly tailwind benefits, though it is hard to quantify.”  

The Irvine, California-based firm is looking forward to inking more such strategic partnerships this year.

For more insights into Alteryx, read the latest earnings call transcript

Insider selling

Asked about the discussions surrounding insider selling of the stock, the CFO declined from commenting on the matter.  “Part of compensation to executives and employees is equity. And so we don’t comment on individuals and their choices to when they choose to sell,” Rubin stated.

Alteryx stock has declined 40% in the past one year, despite surpassing analysts’ consensus on earnings three out of four times. The stock has a 12-month average price target that is 72% upside from the close on Wednesday.

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