Identity management software maker Okta (OKTA) will be reporting earnings tomorrow after market close. Here’s what to expect.
Okta beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 2.4% last quarter, reporting revenues of $665 million, up 13.9% year on year. It was a very strong quarter for the company, with EPS guidance for next quarter exceeding analysts’ expectations and a solid beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates.
Is Okta a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Okta’s revenue to grow 10.4% year on year to $668 million, slowing from the 18.6% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $0.74 per share.
Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Okta has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates three times over the last two years.
Looking at Okta’s peers in the cybersecurity segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Qualys delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 10.1%, beating analysts’ expectations by 1.9%, and Palo Alto Networks reported revenues up 14.3%, topping estimates by 0.8%. Qualys traded down 3.8% following the results while Palo Alto Networks’s stock price was unchanged.
Read our full analysis of Qualys’s results here and Palo Alto Networks’s results here.
Valuation multiples for many growth stocks have not yet reverted to their early 2021 highs, but the market has been optimistic as of late due to a soft landing. This is an economic situation where rate hikes successfully quelled inflation but did not send the economy into a recession. Furthermore, recent rate cuts and Donald Trump's triumph in the 2024 Presidential election have been tailwinds for the market, and while some of the cybersecurity stocks have shown solid performance, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 7.8% on average over the last month. Okta is down 2.7% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $106.00 (compared to the current share price of $90.71).
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