Pegasystems’ stock falls as it misses Q4 earnings and revenue targets

Business process management software firm Pegasystems Inc. saw its stock fall in after-hours trading today after posting fourth quarter results that missed Wall Street’s expectations.

The company reported a net loss of $37.2 million in the quarter. Earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation came to 4 cents per share, while its revenue hit $316.2 million, up 6% from a year ago.

The results were a disappointment, with analysts expecting Pegasystems to report earnings of 15 cents per share on sales of $334.8 million.

Pegasystems’ full year results were more encouraging though. The company reported a net loss for fiscal 2021 of $63 million, with revenue of $1.21 billion, up 19% from the previous year.

Pegasystems founder and Chief Executive Alan Trefler (pictured) said robust demand for digital transformation projects in both front and back-end office was a strong growth driver for his company.

“In 2022 and beyond our goal is to capitalize on this demand to become the enterprise standard workflow engine, servicing backbone and centralized brain for the largest and most demanding enterprises globally,” he said.

Pegasystems sells software that supports customer engagement and business operations. It specializes in business process management and customer relationship management tools, and its platforms are generally viewed as being more bespoke than the offerings of rivals such as Oracle Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. or SAP SE.

The company threw out some more numbers in its earnings release, saying its annual contract value rose to $1.03 billion at the end of the year, up from $835 million the year before. ACV is a measure of how much a company’s customer contracts are worth, calculated by averaging and normalizing their value over one year.

Pegasystems also revealed total revenue backlog of $1.34 billion at the end of the quarter, up from $1.07 billion a year ago. Revenue backlog is the sum of unrecognized revenue that a company is set to earn, based on contractual agreements with customers, so it’s a key indicator of future sales health.

Pegasystems declined to offer guidance for the next quarter, but for its fiscal 2022 it said it will deliver earnings of between 75 cents and $1 per share, with revenue between $1.46 billion and $1.49 billion. Wall Street is expecting the company’s fiscal 2022 earnings to come in at 84 cents per share on revenue of $1.48 billion.

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