Pure Storage Takes On Dell In Top Tier Storage Market

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According to a?recent report, the?global 3D NAND flash memory industry is expected to grow at 20% CAGR from $12.38 billion in 2020 to reach $78.42 billion by 2030 . Mountain View-based Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) recently reported its fourth-quarter results that surpassed market expectations.

Pure Storage’s Financials

Pure Storage’s fourth-quarter revenues grew 41% to $708.6 million, ahead of the market’s estimates of $630.9 million. Adjusted EPS of $0.36 also beat analyst estimates of $0.27.

Subscription services revenue grew 42% to $216 million and product revenues fell 40.6% to $492.6 million. The company crossed a milestone in the quarter with over 10,000 paying customers across its portfolio.

For the fiscal year, Pure Storage’s revenues grew 29% to $2.18 billion.

Pure Storage estimates first-quarter revenues to be $520 million, versus the market forecast of $516.35 million. For the full year, Pure Storage expects revenues of $2.6 billion, while the market forecast revenues of $2.49 billion.

Pure Storage’s Partnerships

Recently, Pure Storage expanded its partnership with Kyndryl to make Kyndryl its key delivery partner. The recent expansion adds to the previously integrated solutions and increases existing Pure skills and capabilities, driving transformative business outcomes for customers. The partnership will allow the two companies to deliver jointly optimized solutions and address challenges faced by enterprises in application and infrastructure modernization, automation, multi-cloud management, and containerization. They will provide cyber resiliency elements natively at the storage layer, enabling cloud-based applications coupled with data portability in the cloud or on-premises.

It also announced its partnership with Microsoft Azure which will accelerate next-gen chip design by delivering a data layer that will be able to keep up with massive, concurrent high-performance computing (HPC) workloads running in the cloud. Both Pure Storage and Equinix have partnered with Microsoft Azure to create cloud-adjacent storage for EDA, HPC, and other highly parallel workloads, including software build and testing. The solution will leverage Purge Storage FlashBlade, its leading unified fast file and object (UFFO) storage platform that provides multi-dimensional performance at scale.

Analysts believe that Pure’s strong performance was driven primarily by its ability to manage its supply chain. Pure?benefited from spillover from orders that competitors such as Dell Technologies Inc. and NetApp Inc. were unable to fulfill because of supply issues .

Pure Storage is also looking to take on Dell head-on with its new product release targeted at the higher end tier of the storage market. FlashArray//XL systems are designed to provide organizations with access to cloud-like scale. Additionally, Pure’s Evergreen Storage program will give them flexibility in their on-premise data centers. Adding FlashArray//XL to its offerings enables the storage teams to build a higher tier of storage – something that was, till recently, only being offered by vendors like Dell.

Pure Storage’s stock is trading at $36.25 with a market capitalization of $10.51 billion. It had touched a 52-week low of $16.79 in July last year. Pure Storage had listed on the NYSE in 2015 by raising $425 million at a valuation of $3.1 billion and a stock price of $17.

Disclosure:?All investors should make their own assessments based on their own research, informed interpretations, and risk appetite. This article expresses my own opinions based on my own research of product-market fit, channel execution, and other factors. My primary interest is in product strategy. While this may have bearing on stock movements, my writings tend to focus on long-term implications. The information presented is illustrative and educational, but should not be regarded as a complete analysis nor recommendation to buy or sell the securities mentioned herein. I am not a registered investment adviser and I am not receiving compensation for this article. I am an investor in this company.

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