Various Q4-24 Earnings
Shopify, Robinhood, Palo Alto.
Some quarters from companies I follow out of interest or for their potential but won't really dive into - for now.
Shopify.
Impressive is the best word to describe this company & this quarter.
Revenue. $2.73B | $2.81B | +3.00% beat
EPS. $0.43 | $0.44 | +2.33% beat
I think we can say by now that Shopify did become the go-to platform for website creation for any e-commerce. The GMV transacting through their platform keeps growing, but most importantly, growth doesn’t slow down. And that growth is as strong in America as in the rest of the world, while Shop Pay is also growing really healthily.
Business is booming, & it shows in the financials, with constant growth in revenues and growing margins as the company continues to optimize its business. They turned on the cash machine, and it is very impressive with a 91% income growth YoY. Add to this a $5.3B net debt & $1.6B of FCF for FY24 for $430M of SBCs.
Guidance was only shared for the first quarter and talks about mid-twenties growth, again, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the company were to hold this rhythm during the next year or even longer as demand for e-commerce platforms isn’t going to slow down soon.
There isn’t anything wrong here.
Robinhood.
We could talk about this one for a long time, going over all the key metrics but I won’t because the important information can be shared in a few words.
Revenue. $944.62M | $1.01B | +7.34% beat
EPS. $0.43 | $0.54 | +25.58% beat
The bottom line is simple.
Robinhood is one of the best platforms there is for any kind of investment in the U.S. Be it short-term leverage, long-term holding, retirement accounts, options, etc... They propose everything & have probably the most ergonomic app & website in their sector.
They ran tons of promotions, cash-back programs & incentives to attract as many users as possible, & when you add to this the assets I talked about above, obviously, if customers get paid to go to the best platform, they go.
And we are in one of the best environments there has been in years, with a really attractive stock & crypto market while the real estate market is getting a bit cold with high interest rates, so tons of liquidity flows into liquid assets.
This was the bull case a year ago, & it went perfectly. So obviously, their results are phenomenal. That’s about it. As for the future? I have no clue, but I would still say that we are dealing with a very cyclical business. As long as liquid risky assets attract, everything is perfect. But things can turn around very rapidly, although I have no idea when that will be.
Like for many, cyclical assets look cheap at the top.
Palo Alto.
It seems like the market finally understood what Palo Alto had to offer.
Revenue. $2.24B | $2.26B | +0.76%
EPS. $0.78 | $0.81 | +3.85%
The market long doubted the "platformization" the company was turning toward, but it seems like it finally starts to yield results with 75 net new platformizations, RPO up 21% YoY led by strong growth for Next-Generation Security ARR - up 37% YoY.
This comes with stronger demand from their clients with a 52% YoY growth of clients spending >$10M on their solutions & 25% YoY for those spending >$5M. It is getting hard to tell them they’re making the wrong choice, as numbers are pretty good.
So good that they had to slightly raise their FY25 guidance for revenue & margins.
Financials are also positive with constant revenue growth, growing margins & profitability - with the decrease in EPS due to a tax benefit received last year which I didn’t add to revenues.
A good quarter which confirms the trajectory of the company. Very positive.