Ping Identity Soars as First Earnings ‘Solid Out of the Gates’
Ping Identity Soars as First Earnings ‘Solid Out of the Gates’
(Bloomberg) -- Ping Identity Holding Corp. shares are rallying as much as 25% Thursday after the cybersecurity company put out what Citi analysts called a “solid out of the gates” earnings report.
It’s at least the second winning first-time earnings report in as many days for the technology sector following a positive release Tuesday from data software company, Datadog.
All 13 analysts tracked by Bloomberg rate Ping the equivalent of a buy. A handful of sell-siders raised their price targets as the stock nears September’s record close of $20.11.
Ping is now about 25% above its September IPO price of $15. Volume in the first half hour of trading Thursday was almost seven times the full-day average over the past month.
Here’s what Wall Street analysts are saying:
Citi, Walter Pritchard
Ping beat consensus “across the board,” driven by legacy replacements, base expansion and a strong performance internationally.
The delta between annualized value of all subscription contracts, or ARR, and subscription revenue beat underscores “the underlying volatility in reported revenue.”
“Investors should focus on ARR to better assess performance.”
Ping is “well-positioned” to expand the market as existing peers have “under-invested in the broader identity market.”
Remains buy, price target raised to $26 from $22.
Raymond James, Michael Turits
“Momentum continues to sound strong in multi product, legacy replacement and large enterprise deals.”
“Ping sounds optimistic on prospects in the high growth customer IAM segment as they focus more on line of business buyers with the new cloud based PingOne for Customer offering. The company is seeing no change in the competitive environment, despite the roll out this year by competitor Okta of their on premise Access Gateway product.”
Keeps outperform rating, price target to $24 from $21, citing “higher revenue forecast and a slightly boosted target multiple given this year’s ARR growth outperformance.”
William Blair, Jonathan Ho
“While the company’s hybrid revenue model makes forecasting revenue challenging, we believe there is considerable opportunity in the identity management market.”
“The company is benefiting from both the decline in traditional legacy competitors,” like IBM and Oracle and “new opportunities” in multi-factor authentication and external use-case opportunities.
Continues to rate outperform.
To contact the reporter on this story: Cristin Flanagan in New York at cflanagan1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Scott Schnipper
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