Workday stock rises after beating Q4 earnings and revenue estimates

Enterprise cloud applications provider Workday (WDAY) reported a 35% increase in the revenue to $788.6 million for the fourth quarter. Earnings rose 41 cents per share compared to 28 cents in the prior-year quarter. Analysts had expected Workday to post a profit of $0.32 per share on revenue of $777.3 million. Workday stock, which hit a fresh 52-week high ($199.45) during today’s regular trading session, increased 2% in the after-hours.

GAAP loss per share in the recently ended quarter widened to $0.47 from a loss of $0.42 per share in the prior-year quarter.

Subscription revenue, which accounts for the lion’s share of Workday’s total revenues, surged 37.5% year-over-year to $673.5 million for the quarter ended January 31, 2019. Revenue from Professional Services segment jumped 24% to $115.1 million. Subscription revenue backlog of $6.74 billion was up 30% annually.

For the fiscal year 2020, the company expects subscription revenue of $3.030 billion to $3.045 billion, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 27% to 28%.

Commenting on the Q4 results, CEO Aneel Bhusri said, “This was a strong close to fiscal 2019. It was not only a record quarter for Workday Financial Management, but we now have half of the Fortune 50 and approximately 40 percent of the Fortune 500 as Workday customers.”

Also read: Nutanix stock tanks more than 20% on weak Q3 outlook

Cloud giant Salesforce (CRM) is set to report its fourth quarter results on March 4, Monday. Shares of CRM also hit a fresh yearly high on today’s trading session.

Shares of Workday, which edged up 0.24% to $197.93 on Thursday, gained 24% since the beginning of 2019 and 36% in the past three months period.

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