Snowflake Stock Soars. Sales Growth Crushed Estimates.

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Snowflake

shares soared in late trading Wednesday after the cloud-based data-warehousing company posted better-than-expected results for the fiscal second quarter and raised its full-year guidance. 

The strong quarter should bolster confidence in the health of demand for cloud-based computing services, reinforcing strong results from leading cloud providers Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

For the July quarter, Snowflake (ticker: SNOW) posted revenue of $497.2 million, up 83% from the year-ago period, ahead of the Street consensus at $467.5 million. Product revenue was $466.3 million, up 83%, and above the company’s forecast range of $435 million to $440 million. Non-GAAP operating margin was 4%, well ahead of the company’s forecast of negative 2%. Adjusted free cash flow was $58.6 million, for a margin of 12%. The company had a GAAP loss in the quarter of 70 cents a share.

The remaining performance obligations, a measure of future work, were $2.7 billion, up 78%. Net revenue retention, a measure of repeat business, was up 171%. Snowflake said it now has 6,808 total customers, of which 246 have trailing revenue of more than $1 million.

For the third quarter, the company projected product revenue of $500 million to $505 million, up between 60% and 62%, with a 2% operating margin.

Snowflake now sees full-year product revenue of between $1.905 billion and $1.915 billion, up between 67% and 68%, with a 75% product gross margin, a 2% operating margin, and a 17% adjusted free cash flow margin. Previous guidance had called for product revenue of $1.885 billion to $1.9 billion.

The early read on the quarter from the Street was bullish, and relieved.

“Snowflake delivered a very strong beat on a revenue, operating margins, and cash flow basis, demonstrating the robustness of the business model, Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne wrote in a research note.

Citi
’s
Tyler Radke likewise wrote that the company appears to be executing and forecasting better than it had been despite a “choppier” macroeconomic environment. “We expect the stock to trade up significantly given bearish sentiment,” he wrote.

Snowflake shares were up almost 17% in late trading to $186.21.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]