Datadog does it again, crushing earnings and revenue forecasts

Datadog Inc.’s stock surged more than 13% Thursday after it reported a strong fourth quarter earnings and revenue beat and provided an upbeat outlook.

The company reported earnings of 20 cents per share on revenue of $326.2 million, up 84% from a year ago. Net income for the period came to $7.16 million.

That was better than expected, with Wall Street analysts looking for earnings of just 11 cents per share on sales of $291.5 million.

Datadog co-founder and Chief Executive Olivier Pomel (pictured) wasn’t wrong when he said the company showed “excellent revenue growth” and “continued business efficiencies”.

“We are proud of our strong execution in fiscal year 2021, with 70% year-over-year revenue growth, $287 million in operating cash flow, and $251 million in free cash flow,” he added. “We continue to believe we’re in early days with our opportunities in observability. And we are just starting our efforts in cloud security and developer-focused products. We have much to do, and we’re excited about what we’re working on for 2022 and beyond.”

Datadog sells application monitoring and analytics tools that help developers and information technology teams to assess the health of their apps and keep an eye on the infrastructure that supports them. The platform is especially popular with DevOps teams, those that combine software developers with information technology staff, to build cloud-native apps and frequently update them, since it enables to keep a lid on any problems those regular changes might cause.

Today’s report followed a similar strong earnings and revenue beat three months ago, showing the company is no one-trick pony.

Datadog’s growth wasn’t only seen in terms of revenue but also its customer base. The company reported it had 2,010 customers that spend at least $100,000 a year on its products at the end of December, up from just 1,228 one year before. It also reported 216 customers who drive at least $1 million in annual recurring revenue, up from 101 a year ago.

For its full fiscal year 2021, Datadog said its revenue came to $1.03 billion, up 70% from a year ago.

Raymond analyst Adam Tingle told Barron’s that Datadog’s success is due to the high level of “stickiness” of its product.

“Datadog has a financial model in which upfront customer acquisition cost is scaled over a healthier lifetime value of the customer in order to ultimately create a very attractive profit stream,” he said.

Such a model may explain Datadog’s confidence in its ability to continue growing. For the first quarter, the company offered a forecast of $334 million to $339 million in revenue, way ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of $306.4 million.

Datadog’s full year forecast was similarly optimistic, with the company looking for $1.51 to $1.53 billion in revenue, versus the $1.40 billion consensus.

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