Splunk Q4 profit dips 94% but beats estimates

Splunk Inc. (SPLK) reported a 94% dip in earnings for the fourth quarter due to higher costs and expenses. However, the results exceeded analysts’ expectations. The machine data specialist raised its revenue outlook for the full year 2020.

Net income plunged by 93.6% to $2.13 million and earnings plummeted by 95.7% to $0.01 per share. Adjusted earnings jumped by 40.9% to $0.93 per share.

Total revenues climbed 35.3% to $622.1 million. Software revenues soared 42% year-over-year to $464 million. The top line was benefited by the rising demand for data-driven insights across all industries.

Looking ahead into the first quarter, the company expects total revenues of about $395 million and adjusted operating margin to be about negative 8%.

For the full year 2020, Splunk lifted its total revenue outlook to about $2.20 billion from the earlier estimate of about $2.15 billion. Adjusted operating margin is still expected to be about 14%.

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For the fourth quarter, revenue from License jumped by 38.1% year-over-year to $411 million. Revenue from Maintenance and services climbed by 30.3% to $211.1 million.

Splunk introduced more than a dozen new or updated products this fiscal year related to data, including Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Cloud and Splunk for Industrial IoT. The company also unveiled Splunk Next, a series of new beta technologies such as Splunk Mobile, Splunk Data Stream Processor, and Splunk Business Flow.

Splunk made several technology investments this fiscal year, including the acquisitions of Phantom and VictorOps. The company also deepened relationships with its most strategic partners this year, including Amazon (AMZN) Web Services.

Shares of Splunk ended Thursday’s regular session down 1.86% at $135.88 on the Nasdaq. The stock has risen over 45% in the past year and over 21% in the past three months.