Enterprise

Atlassian shares skyrocket after earnings and revenue top estimates

Key Points
  • Atlassian's quarterly results beat estimates, and revenue guidance also topped expectations.
  • The company increased prices for some products in the quarter.
Handout: Atlassian co-founders and CEOs Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes pose for a portrait.
Atlassian

Atlassian shares rose more than 10 percent in extended trading on Thursday after the provider of collaboration software reported better-than-expected earnings for its fiscal second quarter.

Here are the key numbers:

  • Earnings: 25 cents per share, excluding certain items, vs. 21 cents as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
  • Revenue: $299 million, vs. $288.3 million as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Sales in the quarter ended Dec. 31, jumped 39 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement. Subscription revenue, its biggest segment, came in at $152.5 million, above the $150 million consensus of analysts polled by FactSet.

Atlassian also issued an optimistic forecast. For the fiscal third quarter, the company is expecting 18 cents in earnings per share, excluding certain items, on $303 million to $305 million in revenue. Analysts were looking for guidance of 18 cents in earnings and revenue of $300.7 million, according to Refinitiv. The company ended the quarter with 138,000 customers, in line with the FactSet analyst consensus.

Atlassian raised the prices of some products, including Confluence and Jira, in October.

"We see continued upside to estimates as we feel the pricing increases are not yet baked into Street expectations," Joel Fishbein, an analyst at BTIG Research, wrote in a report on Wednesday. "We have heard of minimal pushback from buyers during recent price increases, suggesting that there is ample runway to better align compensation with value creation."

But the company's products are still very affordable, even with this round of pricing changes, Atlassian president Jay Simons told CNBC in an interview on Thursday. The effects of the increases have been in line with what executives would expect, he said.

"There's not a negative reaction," he said.

Atlassian didn't see changes in the competitive landscape in the quarter, co-CEO Scott Farquhar said on a conference call with analysts on Thursday. 

"We believe what we have said previously, which is that Microsoft's primary goal in acquiring GitHub was to get more of their developers into Azure. And that's what we continue to see to be the Microsoft focus," Farquhar said.

Atlassian stock dropped amid a wider market selloff in the fourth quarter, but in the past year the shares have surged 71 percent, outperforming Salesforce, Workday and other cloud stocks. The stock ended the trading session at $92.92 per share.

Before the conference call started on Thursday, Atlassian stock was trading at $102 per share after hours. A close at that price would be an all-time high.

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Atlassian: We are constant and measured risk takers