Asana Inc. shares rallied in the extended session Wednesday after the collaboration-software company raised its outlook for the year, following results that topped Wall Street expectations, and disclosed its chief executive bought $350 million in shares.
Asana
ASAN,
shares surged 10% after hours, following a 0.8% rise in the regular session to close at $19.04, compared with their reference price of $21 a share when the company went public through a direct listing two years ago.
“I am investing further in Asana because I strongly believe the market opportunity is enormous and that the Work Graph is the best possible solution for helping enterprises achieve their most important goals,” said Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder and chief executive, in a statement. Moskovitz also co-founded Facebook, which now goes by Meta Platforms Inc. META, with Mark Zuckerberg.
“With the additional $350 million in capital announced today, we believe we are fully-funded to execute on our current strategies and well-positioned to reach free cash flow positive before the end of calendar 2024,” Moskovitz said of the 19.3 million share purchase. Moskowitz already owns about 24 million shares, or about 23% of outstanding shares.
The San Francisco-based company reported a second-quarter loss of $113 million, or 59 cents a share, compared with a loss of $68.4 million, or 40 cents a share, in the year-ago period. The adjusted loss, which excludes stock-based compensation expenses and other items, was 34 cents a share, compared with a loss of 23 cents a share in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose to $134.9 million from $89.5 million in the year-ago quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast a loss of 39 cents a share on revenue of $127.8 million.
Asana forecast a loss of 33 cents to 32 cents a share on revenue of $138.5 million to $139.5 million for the third quarter. Analysts had estimated a loss of 32 cents a share on revenue of $137.8 million.
The company also increased its forecast for the year. Asana now expects revenue of $544 million to $547 million, up from a previous range of $536 million to $540 million for the year.
Analysts had forecast a loss of $1.30 a share on revenue of $535.5 million for the year.
“We believe that Asana is the most scalable work management platform out there, as evidenced by our broad deployment and millions of users worldwide, including our largest customer deployment of over 100,000 paid seats,” Moskovitz said.
As of Wednesday’s close, the stock is down 75% year to date, compared with a 17% loss by the S&P 500 index
SPX,
and a 25% drop for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/asana-stock-rallies-more-than-10-after-beat-and-raise-quarter-11662582811?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo