Technology

How Tableau Earnings Crashed and Burned

Chris Lange

Published: February 5, 2016 10:35 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 1:34 pm

Tableau Software Inc. (NYSE: DATA) reported its fourth-quarter financial results after the markets closed on Thursday. The company had a net loss of $0.33 per share on $202.8 million in revenue, which compares to consensus estimates of $0.16 in earnings per share (EPS) on $201.2 million in revenue.

Total revenue may have increased 42%, license revenue by 31% and international revenue by 63%, but the quarter still posted an operating loss. But it only got worse from there, considering the guidance.

On the conference call, the company gave its outlook for the first quarter as a net loss of $0.08 to $0.12 per share and revenue in the range of $160 million to $165 million. The consensus estimates call for $0.06 in EPS on $179.48 million in revenue.

During this quarter, the company noted that 88% of Fortune 500 companies such as Cisco, Wells Fargo and Capital One use Tableau. The company also hired 1,000 new employees in 2015 and currently has over 3,000 employees worldwide.

Christian Chabot, CEO of Tableau, commented on earnings:

In Q4, a record 3,600 new customer accounts chose Tableau, bringing our total to more than 39,000 worldwide. This speaks to the immense popularity of Tableau’s products and continued strong demand from customers around the world. I remain optimistic that Tableau is best positioned to address the large and growing market opportunity for self-service visual analytics.

On the books, the company had $795.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared to $680.6 million in the same period from the previous year.

Shares of Tableau sank to a new 52-week low of $40.04 Friday morning. The 52-week high is $131.34, and the consensus analyst price target is $112.72.