Tech

Snowflake shows 119% revenue growth in first earnings report as a public company

Key Points
  • Snowflake's revenue growth was roughly in line with the prior quarter.
  • The company's shares debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in September as Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce invested.
Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake Inc. on Sept. 16th, 2020.
CNBC

Shares of Snowflake fell as much as 8% in extended trading on Wednesday after the data-warehousing software maker issued its first quarterly financial results as a public company.

Here's how Snowflake performed:

  • Earnings: Loss of $1.01 per share.
  • Revenue: $159.6 million.

Snowflake's revenue grew 119% year over year in its fiscal third quarter, which ended on Oct. 31, according to a statement. In the previous quarter it delivered 121% growth. Losses narrowed from $1.92 per share in the year-ago quarter, while gross margin fell to 58.2% from 59.6%.

The company's software provides a cloud-based alternative to data warehouses that unify a variety of data and execute queries with on-premises hardware and software. The coronavirus pandemic has driven greater interest in Snowflake, CEO Frank Slootman said in April. Competition comes from the top public clouds, which also happen to be key suppliers for Snowflake, Slootman told analysts on a conference call on Wednesday.

The company said for the fiscal fourth quarter it expects $162 million to $167 million in product revenue, which represented 93% of total revenue in the fiscal third quarter. Snowflake said at that range, product revenue would be up 97% to 103% year over year.

Snowflake said it now has 65 customers contributing over $1 million in product revenue over the trailing 12 months. The company reported $927.9 million in remaining performance obligation for contracted revenue that hasn't been recognized, up 240% on an annualized basis.

Over time Snowflake can widen its margins to the mid-70% range by receiving more favorable pricing from cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, along with becoming larger and cutting back on discounts, Mike Scarpelli, Snowflake's finance chief, said on the call.

The company has added to its sales organization despite the economic recession and will keep up its pace of hiring, Scarpelli said.

In September Snowflake completed its initial public offering and joined the New York Stock Exchange with Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce investing. The stock closed at $253.93 per share on its first day of trading and has since increased about 15% since then, excluding Wednesday's stock move, compared with a 8% increase for the S&P 500 over the same stretch.

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