Cloudera Powers Its Data Platform With Partnerships

I’m publishing this series to discuss a topic that I follow closely - cloud stocks, trends, strategy, acquisitions, and more. Please subscribe to my Cloud Stock Analysis series and never miss an article.

Enterprise data software company Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR) recently topped revenue and earnings estimates for its first quarter, but its outlook was disappointing. 

Cloudera’s Financials

Cloudera’s first quarter revenues grew 12% to $210.5 million, ahead of the market’s forecast by 3.39%. GAAP net loss was $55.8 million compared to $103.8 million a year ago. Non GAAP net income was $0.05 per share, beating analyst estimates of $0.01 per share.

The company exited Q1 with $519 million in cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities and restricted cash, up from $487 million at the end of Q4. Capital expenditures were $1 million in the quarter. Total contract liabilities, which comprise deferred revenue and other contract liabilities, were $515 million at the end of the first quarter. RPO was $828 million, up 12% year-over-year. Current RPO grew 11% year-over-year.

During the quarter, subscription revenues grew 21% to $187.1 million and services revenues declined 28% to $23.4 million.

Customers renewed in Q1 at the second highest rate in the last five quarters. The number of customers who generate ARR greater than $1 million grew from 154 to 164. The total number of customers who exceeded $100,000 of ARR was flat at 1,003.

For the second quarter, Cloudera forecast non GAAP earnings of $0.06 to $0.07 per share on revenues of $206-$209 million. It has revised its fiscal year guidance. It now expects to end fiscal 2021 with revenues of $825 -845 million and non GAAP net income of $0.26 to $0.30 per share. Its earlier forecast was for revenue of $860-$880 million and a non GAAP net income of $0.25-$0.29 per share. The market was looking for net loss of $0.06 per share on revenues of $210.44 million for the quarter and earnings of $0.28 per share on revenues of $838.7 million for the year.

The business outlook is based on the assumption that the recessionary impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will peak in Cloudera’s second and third quarters of fiscal 2021 and moderate in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2021.

Cloudera’s New Offerings and Partnerships

Last year, the company announced the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) that provides enterprises with public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments with self-service analytics, from the edge to the cloud. CDP is open source, open compute, open storage, and open for integration. Its self-service experiences include data engineering, data warehouse, operational database, flow, streaming, and machine learning.

Despite the pandemic, momentum continues to build for its CDP. The number of CDP Public Cloud customers has tripled during the quarter compared to over a dozen customers in its last report. The company plans to make available CDP Private Cloud at the end of fiscal Q2.

Last month, Cloudera introduced new MLOps features and extended Shared Data Experience (SDX) to machine learning models as part of its CDP Machine Learning cloud service. CDP’s repeatable, transparent, and governed life cycle management capabilities enable customers to scale model deployments and machine learning use cases with AI-driven businesses.

To strengthen its CDP ecosystem, Cloudera has expanded its partnership with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In March, CDP was made available on Azure Marketplace, allowing joint customers of Cloudera and Microsoft to easily discover and provision CDP on Azure using Azure credits and leveraging integrated billing for simple and friction-free procurement. In May, it expanded its partnership with GCP and plans to integrate CDP with GCP and offer the joint product on GCP Marketplace.

Cloudera’s core target market focus is the Fortune 2000, the biggest enterprises that have highly regulated data-driven models. Its USP is that it is a data platform company that manages the entire life cycle of data. Its strategy focuses not on competing with point solution providers but on partnering with them. It has partnered with IBM’s Red Hat on OpenShift for private cloud and with GCP, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services for public cloud.

Its stock is trading at $11.44 with a market capitalization of $3.38 billion. The stock had fallen to a 52-week low of $4.76 in June last year. The stock had soared to a 52-week high of $13.93 in June this year following rumors about its possible acquisition. While IBM is being touted as the most likely acquirer, Cloudera would benefit more from an acquisition by Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. Cloudera would also fit in well with Amazon’s hybrid multi-cloud strategy. So, Amazon should buy Cloudera.

Looking For Some Hands-On Advice?

For entrepreneurs who want to discuss their specific businesses with me, I’m very happy to assess your situation during my free online 1Mby1M Roundtables, held almost every week. You can also connect with me during our Rendezvous meetups, and check out my Bootstrapping Course, our YouTube channel, podcast interviews with VCs and Founders, and, to follow my writings, click Follow from here.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash