Sunday, March 31, 2019

Top Sector Spotlight

&l;p&g;&l;img class=&q;dam-image getty size-large wp-image-1138175995&q; src=&q;https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/dam/imageserve/1138175995/960x0.jpg?fit=scale&q; data-height=&q;640&q; data-width=&q;960&q;&g; NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 25: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange slightly in morning trading. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Heading into the week of the FOMC announcement the Consumer Staples Select (XLP) was the only US sector ETF that looked attractive for new purchase. The stocks in this sector are considered defensive as they typically have a lower volatility. They are quite different than the Technology Sector Select (XLK) which I focused on &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspray/2019/03/17/the-week-ahead-can-tech-stocks-drag-the-market-higher/#504e0bc31728&q;&g;over a week ago&l;/a&g;.

&l;img class=&q;size-full wp-image-20897&q; src=&q;http://blogs-images.forbes.com/tomaspray/files/2019/03/Sector1.jpg?width=960&q; alt=&q;&q; data-height=&q;745&q; data-width=&q;889&q;&g;

XLP had pulled back towards its rising WMA before closing above the prior three week high. It was up 0.7% last week, supporting the positive outlook, and a move above the resistance at $55.91 will complete the major trading range (lines a and b). This would project a move to the $60-62 area.

The weekly RS is now very close to moving above its WMA and shows a positive long term trend (line c). The weekly OBV turned bullish early in 2019 as it moved above its WMA. It made another new high for the year last week.

&l;img class=&q;size-full wp-image-20898&q; src=&q;http://blogs-images.forbes.com/tomaspray/files/2019/03/Sector2.jpg?width=960&q; alt=&q;&q; data-height=&q;673&q; data-width=&q;900&q;&g;

In this sector, the Dow Jones US Food Products ($DJUSFP) is one of the industry groups that looks interesting. It was up 2.65% last week, as it has rallied nicely from the two-week low at 470.70. It is overbought short-term, as it has reached the 200-day MA and the daily starc+ band.

The weekly Percentage Price Oscillator (PPO) has been positive since early February. The PPO is a technical momentum indicator that shows the relationship between two moving averages, similar to the MACD and MACD-His. The weekly relative performance is trying to bottom, but now needs to move above the resistance (line b) to signal that it is a new market leader.

&l;img class=&q;size-full wp-image-20899&q; src=&q;http://blogs-images.forbes.com/tomaspray/files/2019/03/Sector3.jpg?width=960&q; alt=&q;&q; data-height=&q;745&q; data-width=&q;889&q;&g;

Stockcharts.com has 99 stocks in this industry group (&l;a href=&q;https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/sectorsummary.html?&a;amp;G=SECTOR_DJUSFP&a;amp;O=1&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;link&l;/a&g;) and one that I like is Hormel (HRL). The weekly chart shows that it has been trading in a tight range above the 20-week EMA at $42.52. A close above $43.95 would be bullish, with the weekly starc+ band at $46.53.

The weekly relative performance has turned up, but is still below its WMA. It does show a positive long term-trend (line a). The On-Balance Volume (OBV) has just moved back above its WMA, which is a bullish sign.

I am also keeping an eye on Kellogg Co. (K), as it triggered a weekly doji buy signal last week. I will post a chart of K on &l;a href=&q;https://twitter.com/TomAspray&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Twitter&l;/a&g;&a;nbsp;this week. For my overall market commentary I recommend you read my weekend post &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspray/2019/03/24/the-week-ahead-new-technical-warnings/&q;&g;&a;ldquo;The Week Ahead: New Technical Warnings?&a;rdquo;&l;/a&g;&l;/p&g;

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Tiffany & Co (TIF) Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

Logo of jester cap with thought bubble.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Tiffany & Co  (NYSE:TIF)Q4 2018 Earnings Conference CallMarch 22, 2019, 8:30 a.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to this Tiffany & Company Fourth Quarter 2018 Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. Participating on today's call is Mr. Mark Aaron, Vice President of Investor Relations; Mr. Mark Erceg, Tiffany's, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Alessandro Bogliolo, Tiffany's Chief Executive Officer.

At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Aaron. Please go ahead.

Mark L. Aaron -- Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you. Thank you, everyone for joining us on today's call. Earlier today, we issued Tiffany's fourth quarter and full year results with the news release and the filing of our Annual Report on Form 10-K. I hope you've had a chance to review at least some of the results. Following some comments from Alessandro and Mark, we will be pleased to take your questions.

Before continuing, please note that statements made on this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Actual results might differ materially from the planned, assumed or expected results, expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by applicable law or regulation.

Additional information concerning factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially as well as the required reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures referenced in this presentation to their comparable GAAP measures is set forth in Tiffany's Form 10-K filed earlier today with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the news release filed today under cover of Form 8-K. Those filings can be found on Tiffany's website https://investor.tiffany.com by selecting Financial Information.

I'm now pleased to turn the call over to Alessandro.

Alessandro Bogliolo -- Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mark, and hello, everyone. Mark Erceg and I will address these results in a broad sense and as they pertain to our key strategic priorities. And then we will allow plenty of time for your questions. The specific details of our financial results can be found in today's news release and 10-K filing. Broadly speaking, I'm pleased with Tiffany's annual results in 2018 and with what our global team accomplished.

For the full year, sales rose in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Japan and Europe and increased in most product capitals and we were encouraged to experience higher sales attributed to local customers in the full year, even though sales attributed to foreign tourists were volatile. As you know, our sales growth decelerated in the second half, we can talk about external factors that benefited us in the first half and then went against us in the second half. But I believe it is more productive to focus on the journey that we started exactly one-year ago. When we presented to you our six strategic priorities as well as our decision to increase investment spending in several areas to support sustainable long-term growth and we made substantial progress in the past year and at last is going to happen in 2019.

Our strategy to amplify and evolved brand message was highlighted with bolder messaging in the BELIEVE IN LOVE, "Believe in Dreams" and holiday campaigns. These campaigns came as a pleasant surprise to our audience and signal that something new and exciting was starting to happen at Tiffany. I'm pleased that as a result sales growth in 2018 came from our existing customer base as well as from new customers and former customers were not shopped at Tiffany in a number of years. Then since January 2019, we have strengthened our message on diamonds. A (inaudible) Tiffany diamond at a campaign on social media. Our leading innovation of providing to customers, the country, or region of origin of our individually registered diamond and the enormous visibility of the legendary 128 carat Tiffany yellow diamond with Lady Gaga at the Oscars are a synchronized ascertain of the beauty, traceability and glamour, of our superlative Tiffany diamonds.

Another strategy is to renew our product offerings at a faster pace. And in 2018, we unveiled the Paper Flowers jewelry line introduced numerous expansions of existing collections made a significant investment in high jewelry inventory to build a more powerful assortment in some of our key locations around the world. And we began to offer expensive jewelry customization through the Make It My Tiffany program. For Holiday 2018, we launched in the US, a limited assortment of the Tiffany True collection. We are now excited to roll-out the launch of the Tiffany True solitaire and boldly design jewelry in all the regions and with increasing new styles throughout 2019.

For our priority to deliver an exciting customer experience, in 2018, we expanded Tiffany's store presence with the opening of 10 stores in high potential markets around the world, while relocating a number of existing stores and closing four stores for a net increase of six stores. And of course, we announced a bold initiative to transform our New York flagship store into an exciting 21st century retail experience by the end of 2021.

In 2019, we will have some important openings in key cities. We just completed the relocation of our most important store in Australia, a significant market for Tiffany. It's a beautiful store in Sydney, at the corner of Pitt and King streets that has surprised customers, press and the entire industry for its stylish aesthetics, imposing size and the refine experience. And next week, we will celebrate the grand opening of our newest location in the US. The first -- our first store in Washington DC in City Center DC, a new luxury destination for local customers and tourists. We plan to announce other important new stores in key markets such as in Greater China during the course of the year.

In addition to opening new stores, we are also evolving our presentations within existing stores through our fresh and innovative global display announcement initiative in North America, which we are now pleased to extend in 2019 to the rest of the world. In terms of delivering a more exciting omni-channel experience, we are now upgrading our websites globally, which provides a number of benefits to both the consumer experience and Tiffany's ability to innovate. We are offering a rich blended experience of content and commerce, elevating the brand, while reducing the friction in the user's journey as much as possible. The announcements give Tiffany more agility in testing, personalizing and content optimization.

For example, on our US website, we have just begun offering for sale, select, love and engagement diamond rings online. US clients can now filter available inventory for purchase on tiffany.com, in addition to consulting a diamond expert to find the perfect ring. In recent years, Tiffany has been accepting phone orders for diamond rings from customers solely beyond our store distribution. So we believe this is a natural and complementary expansion of our in-store experience for the love and the engagement category. And we look forward to a process of continuous improvement in our digital capabilities going forward, including plans to introduce a company operated, e-commerce enabled website in China later this year.

In summary, we are still in the early stages of the long and exciting journey that I referred to one-year ago. The Tiffany brand is increasingly recognized and desired. Our talented organization is aligned with our strategic priorities and is getting more proactive and agile everyday. I believe that the long-term outlook is very promising.

I will now turn the call over to Mark Erceg.

Mark J. Erceg -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Alex. From a financial perspective, fiscal 2018 results are consistent with what we hoped to achieve, when just a little over one-year ago, we shared our six strategic priorities and declared that in order to properly fund those priorities, fiscal 2018, would be an investment year. Since Alex has already commented on our sales performance, let me say just a few words about earnings from operations, diluted net earnings per share and free cash flow. You will recall us stating that fiscal 2018 operating earnings were expected to be flat or slightly down, in order to fund meaningful investments across a number of areas we felt were essential to support sustainable, long-term, mid-single digit sales growth. Consistent with that earnings from operations came in at $790 million versus $809 million, during fiscal 2017, a decline of approximately 2%.

We also passed along significant benefits associated with US tax reform. Specifically, we started the year expecting an overall 2018 effective tax rate somewhere in the high-20s and is more information became available and we completed our analysis, we ultimately ended the year at just a fraction over 21%. While our 2018 effective tax rate did include some one-time benefits, not directly associated with the lower US statutory tax rate, a lower effective tax rate was the primary driver that allowed us to finish the year with diluted net EPS at $4.75 per share, which was toward the higher end of the last guidance range we provided at $4.65 to $4.80 per share and well above our initial fiscal 2018 guidance of being somewhere between $4.25 to $4.45 per share.

Finally, we started the year projecting approximately $380 million of free cash flow and after revising our projections to account for higher inventory levels, including for high jewelry and increased cash payments for income taxes related to US tax reform, we ended the year at $250 million of free cash flow. So in total and across our key financial performance indicators of sales growth, operating earnings, net earnings and free cash flow, I think it is fair to say we delivered what we set out to achieve.

From a balance sheet perspective, we finished the year with $855 million of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments versus roughly $1 billion of total short-term and long-term debt. This means that after spending more than $400 million to repurchase shares of our common stock and after increasing our quarterly dividend rate by 10%, which was the 17th increase in the past 16 years, our balance sheet remains a major source of strength and flexibility.

In terms of our outlook for 2019, we are maintaining the preliminary guidance we provided on January 18th, when we reported holiday sales results. Low single digit sales growth for the full year as reported and slightly higher on a constant exchange rate basis and a mid single-digit increase in diluted EPS.

It's worth noting that our forecast for mid single-digit EPS growth and our expectation of modest operating margin expansion includes a number of unique factors. First, incremental SG&A expense related to the New York flagship store project, which was $0.07 per share in 2018 is expected to be $0.10 per share to $0.15 per share in each of 2019, 2020 and 2021. Second, our 2019 forecast accounts for the fact that we will no longer be able to recognize an $8 million a year deferred gain on previous sale leasebacks due to a new accounting standard. Finally, we expect an all-in effective income tax rate of approximately 23% in 2019, which is roughly 200 basis points higher than fiscal 2018.

From a timing standpoint and consistent with January results, while we expect full year reported sales to grow by a low-single digit percentage, we expect sales in the first half to be adversely affected by several factors; a meaningful FX headwind, lower foreign tourist spending and a difficult comparison to strong base period comps. In addition to these items, first half earnings will also be negatively affected by incremental strategic investment spending that began in the second quarter of 2018 and has not yet fully annualized. We anticipate that these pressures will lessen throughout the year and as additional new products are introduced, our marketing message continues to resonate and our in-store experience becomes even stronger, we expect reported sales growth to strengthen and earnings growth to resume in the second half of the year.

That wraps up my brief remarks. So I'll turn the call back over to Mark.

Mark L. Aaron -- Vice President of Investor Relations

Thanks, Alessandro and Mark. Operator, we are ready to take some questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our first question will come from Michael Binetti with Credit Suisse.

Michael Binetti -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions here. Mark, could you speak to some of the puts and takes on the gross margin in the fourth quarter. I guess, I'm looking at it on a multi-year basis. Just trying to see, if I understand why the leverage slowed a bit of the comps got easier there, maybe you could help us with some of the puts and takes? And then I also was curious why the SG&A -- maybe a little help on why the SG&A growth rate slowed fairly significantly. I think, you know, when we talked previously you kind of said the big break point in that growth rate would be middle of this year to your comments about anniversarying some of the step-up for the investments?

Mark J. Erceg -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, sure. I think, on the gross margin point, I think the bigger story in 2018 is the fact that our gross margin was up 70 basis points for the full year. As far as you know what happens in any given quarter on gross margin, I don't think that's overly helpful to unpack. There's always mix effects, there is any number of things that can fall within that. And of course our sales growth in the fourth quarter was lower than the balance of the year and so there's going to be less fixed cost leverage even through the COGS line. As far as SG&A is concerned, I think one of the things that we've talked about a lot in the past is the need to ensure that our cost takeout programs are robust and strong and that takes a little bit of time to gear up. So to the extent that SG&A growth in the fourth quarter was lower than you might have seen throughout the year. I think that's a positive indicator. And as we think about the guidance we provided for 2019, we're basically saying that we're going to get operating margin expansion on a low single-digit sales growth. So I think again our cost takeout programs continue to ramp up and I think you're seeing some of that in the fourth quarter at this point.

Michael Binetti -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Great. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Operator

And next we will hear from Paul Lejuez with Citi.

Paul Lejuez -- Citi -- Analyst

Hey, thanks, guys. I'm curious, what you might be able to point to that makes you feel confident that the amplification of the brand message is working and that you just hit a macro speed bump. Anything you could share with us that you're looking at, any data that you can provide. Also curious, if you think about what was the biggest disappointment to you this quarter relative to what you were thinking before it started and also curious if there any positive surprises? Thanks.

Alessandro Bogliolo -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Paul for your question. Well, about the messaging, it was a big change in 2018, and we are pleased to see that the sales, both to existing customers as well as new customers are increasing. And so we are happy with it and we have seen also in the last quarter, even if it was softer, a nice result in terms of sales to existing customers, which is reassuring that the new message is not putting away customers from our brand, but on the contrary, bringing them back. Now, in terms of disappointment, well, of course, the last quarter, I think it was a mix of external factors, we have seen it also in general in the industry, especially in (inaudible) that the last quarter has not been as fantastic as the first part of the year. So Tiffany was affected by this. But on the other side, there were surely internal factors because we are really at the first year of our transformative journey and we are working very hard on it, but we are far from having all the pieces of the puzzle put together. So we are working on it going ahead, but we were not perfect. We have done a lot of new things. Also things where we have made some mistakes and we are learning and we are addressing it. So I would say it's a mix of external, but also reasonably expected internal factors.

Paul Lejuez -- Citi -- Analyst

Alex, anything you can share on those internal factors? What you would have done better?

Alessandro Bogliolo -- Chief Executive Officer

Well, for example, I would have started holiday campaign three weeks earlier to give you an example. I mean, many other detailed things that you know, if the life -- the operational life of the company. And I think this is all good experience, because it was a year of innovation. And so we are -- the most important thing for us is that, we have a very good analysis of these results of our fourth quarter and we have adjusted plans in order to keep on surprising customers. When it comes to communication, so for example, the communication that we have seen in 2018, I think it was appropriate, because it was communicating that something big and new was happening at Tiffany. Now, don't expect the same communication in 2019, because we want to keep on surprising our customers. And this is one example among many others.

Paul Lejuez -- Citi -- Analyst

Got you. Thank you. Good luck.

Alessandro Bogliolo -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

And now we will hear from Oliver Chen with Cowen and Company.

Oliver Chen -- Cowen and Company -- Analyst

Hi, good morning. Alessandro, I would love your thoughts on bala

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Top 10 Growth Stocks For 2019

tags:MED,BWLD,TBI,ISRG,JWN,

Equities research analysts predict that GameStop (NYSE:GME) will announce $1.96 billion in sales for the current quarter, Zacks Investment Research reports. Four analysts have made estimates for GameStop’s earnings. The highest sales estimate is $1.99 billion and the lowest is $1.88 billion. GameStop posted sales of $2.05 billion in the same quarter last year, which suggests a negative year-over-year growth rate of 4.4%. The business is expected to report its next quarterly earnings results after the market closes on Thursday, May 31st.

On average, analysts expect that GameStop will report full year sales of $8.86 billion for the current fiscal year, with estimates ranging from $8.80 billion to $8.89 billion. For the next fiscal year, analysts anticipate that the firm will report sales of $8.66 billion per share, with estimates ranging from $8.62 billion to $8.69 billion. Zacks Investment Research’s sales averages are a mean average based on a survey of research analysts that follow GameStop.

Top 10 Growth Stocks For 2019: MEDIFAST INC(MED)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Biostar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BSPM) shares jumped 29.86 percent to close at $2.87 on Friday. Commercial Vehicle Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CVGI) shares gained 28.87 percent to close at $8.75 after reporting upbeat Q1 earnings. Mexco Energy Corporation (NYSE: MXC) gained 27.02 percent to close at $5.4744. Carbon Black, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBLK) climbed 26 percent to close at $23.94. Carbon Black priced its IPO at $19 per share. Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: PTLA) rose 25.64 percent to close at $42.44 after the FDA approved the company's Andexxa, the only antidote indicated for patients treated with rivaroxaban and apixaban. Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc. (NYSE: NGVC) rose 23.19 percent to close at $8.50 after reporting Q2 results. California Resources Corporation (NYSE: CRC) shares gained 22.45 percent to close at $31.58 following upbeat Q1 earnings. Atomera Incorporated (NASDAQ: ATOM) gained 22.31 percent to close at $6.25 after reporting Q1 results. Medifast, Inc. (NYSE: MED) shares jumped 22.27 percent to close at $121.46 after the company reported strong Q1 results and raised its FY18 guidance. Jerash Holdings (US), Inc. (NASDAQ: JRSH) gained 20.86 percent to close at $8.46. Pandora Media, Inc. (NYSE: P) rose 19.83 percent to close at $6.89 after reporting strong quarterly results. Shake Shack Inc (NYSE: SHAK) rose 18.01 percent to close at $55.95 on Friday after the company reported upbeat results for its first quarter and raised its FY18 guidance. Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI) rose 17.73 percent to close at $21.25 after reporting strong preliminary results for the third quarter. Schmitt Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMIT) rose 17.41 percent to close at $2.36. Titan International, Inc. (NYSE: TWI) shares gained 16.78 percent to close at $12.25 following Q1 earnings. Integer Holdings Corporation (NYSE: ITGR) shares rose 14.23 percent to close at $63.40 following Q1 result
  • [By Lisa Levin]

    Medifast, Inc. (NYSE: MED) shares were also up, gaining 25 percent to $124.60 after the company reported strong Q1 results and raised its FY18 guidance.

  • [By Max Byerly]

    MediBloc (CURRENCY:MED) traded 0.2% lower against the U.S. dollar during the twenty-four hour period ending at 16:00 PM Eastern on June 7th. MediBloc has a total market cap of $37.92 million and $586,074.00 worth of MediBloc was traded on exchanges in the last 24 hours. Over the last week, MediBloc has traded down 36% against the U.S. dollar. One MediBloc token can now be purchased for $0.0128 or 0.00000166 BTC on major exchanges including Coinrail, Bibox and Gate.io.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    MediBloc [QRC] (CURRENCY:MED) traded 11.6% lower against the US dollar during the 24 hour period ending at 20:00 PM Eastern on August 29th. One MediBloc [QRC] token can now be bought for about $0.0066 or 0.00000100 BTC on popular exchanges including Gate.io, Coinrail and Bibox. MediBloc [QRC] has a total market cap of $19.65 million and $279,707.00 worth of MediBloc [QRC] was traded on exchanges in the last 24 hours. During the last week, MediBloc [QRC] has traded 27.8% lower against the US dollar.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    MediBloc [QRC20] (MED) is a proof-of-work (PoW) token that uses the HybridScryptHash256 hashing algorithm. It was first traded on January 3rd, 2014. MediBloc [QRC20]’s total supply is 4,097,545,844 tokens and its circulating supply is 2,966,384,100 tokens. MediBloc [QRC20]’s official website is medibloc.org/en. MediBloc [QRC20]’s official Twitter account is @MEDDevTeam. The official message board for MediBloc [QRC20] is medium.com/@MediBloc. The Reddit community for MediBloc [QRC20] is /r/MediBloc and the currency’s Github account can be viewed here.

Top 10 Growth Stocks For 2019: Buffalo Wild Wings Inc.(BWLD)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Steve Symington]

    That's not to say it was a quiet day for every stock on the market. With earnings season ramping up, brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD) and restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings (NASDAQ:BWLD) served as an exercise in contrast as investors reacted to their respective quarterly reports.

  • [By Peter Graham]

    A long term performance chart shows Dave & Busters Entertainment tripling in value before falling back while small cap upscale gentlemen's clubs and restaurant owner RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc (NASDAQ: RICK) began taking off in 2016 and small cap Buffalo Wild Wings (NASDAQ: BWLD) is being acquired by Arby's Restaurant Group:

Top 10 Growth Stocks For 2019: TrueBlue Inc.(TBI)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Logan Wallace]

    ValuEngine downgraded shares of Trueblue (NYSE:TBI) from a hold rating to a sell rating in a report issued on Friday morning.

    Several other research firms have also recently weighed in on TBI. Zacks Investment Research cut shares of Trueblue from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research report on Tuesday, February 12th. BMO Capital Markets decreased their price objective on shares of Trueblue from $26.00 to $24.00 and set a market perform rating for the company in a research report on Monday, February 11th. TheStreet cut shares of Trueblue from a b- rating to a c rating in a research report on Monday, December 31st. Finally, Credit Suisse Group decreased their price objective on shares of Trueblue from $31.00 to $25.00 and set a hold rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, November 6th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and three have given a hold rating to the company. Trueblue presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $26.00.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    Media stories about Trueblue (NYSE:TBI) have trended somewhat positive on Monday, according to Accern Sentiment. The research firm rates the sentiment of news coverage by reviewing more than 20 million news and blog sources in real time. Accern ranks coverage of publicly-traded companies on a scale of negative one to one, with scores closest to one being the most favorable. Trueblue earned a media sentiment score of 0.09 on Accern’s scale. Accern also assigned media stories about the business services provider an impact score of 45.3296498009881 out of 100, meaning that recent news coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an effect on the stock’s share price in the near future.

  • [By Motley Fool Transcribers]

    TrueBlue Inc  (NYSE:TBI)Q4 2018 Earnings Conference CallFeb. 07, 2019, 5:00 p.m. ET

    Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

    Operator

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Russell Investments Group Ltd. grew its stake in Trueblue Inc (NYSE:TBI) by 21.2% during the first quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The fund owned 137,178 shares of the business services provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 23,951 shares during the quarter. Russell Investments Group Ltd.’s holdings in Trueblue were worth $3,553,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Top 10 Growth Stocks For 2019: Intuitive Surgical Inc.(ISRG)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    Caisse DE Depot ET Placement DU Quebec decreased its position in Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG) by 21.3% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 1,921 shares of the medical equipment provider’s stock after selling 520 shares during the period. Caisse DE Depot ET Placement DU Quebec’s holdings in Intuitive Surgical were worth $793,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

  • [By Keith Speights]

    It isn't likely that Alphabet is concerned in the least about J&J's acquisition of Auris Health. But it could be a different story for the current leader in robotic surgery, Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG).

  • [By Brian Feroldi]

    TransEnterix (NYSEMKT:TRXC) recently surprised investors on the upside when it reported its first-quarter results. The company's Senhance surgical system is off to a fast start right out of the gate, and it has attracted a lot of positive attention from the medical community. This just goes to show how much demand is out there for an alternative to Intuitive Surgical's (NASDAQ: ISRG) dominant da Vinci platform. 

  • [By Brian Feroldi]

    Mazor Robotics has been following in the footsteps of robotic-surgery granddaddy Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) for years. However, Mazor knew that competing against the entrenched giant was going to be a losing battle, so it chose to focus on parts of the body that were left untouched by Intuitive's machines: the spine and brain.

Top 10 Growth Stocks For 2019: Nordstrom Inc.(JWN)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) was downgraded by analysts at Zacks Investment Research from a buy rating to a hold rating. According to Zacks, “Nordstrom outperformed the industry in the last six months driven by the smooth execution of customer strategy and disciplined inventory management. The company has an impressive surprise history with earnings beat delivered in seven of the last eight quarters and topping sales estimates in three of the trailing four quarters. Results in first-quarter fiscal 2018 gained from the shift in Nordstrom’s loyalty event to the quarter compared with the second quarter in the prior year. Management raised the low-end of its EBIT and earnings views for fiscal 2018. Also, its focus on store expansion and strengthening capabilities through further investments, particularly in digital growth, remains noteworthy. However, investments toward occupancy, technology, supply chain and marketing are weighing on its margin performance for the last few quarters. Higher expenses have been resulting in higher SG&A expense, which is hurting profitability.”

  • [By Chris Lange]

    When Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE: JWN) reported its most recent quarterly results after the markets closed on Thursday, the department store chain said that it had $0.95 in earnings per share (EPS) and $4.07 billion in revenue. Consensus estimates had called for $0.84 in EPS and revenue of $3.96 billion. The fiscal second-quarter of last year reportedly had EPS of $0.65 and $3.79 billion in revenue.

  • [By Steve Symington]

    But several individual companies bucked the indexes' trend. Read on to learn why MiMedx Group (NASDAQ:MDXG), Core Laboratories (NYSE:CLB), and Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) trailed the broader market today.

  • [By Benzinga News Desk]

    Dan Loeb is looking to play in the emerging financial technology space. The hedge fund manager behind Third Point is looking to raise $400 million for Far Point Acquisition Corp., a so-called “blank check” acquisition company, he revealed in a regulatory filing: Link

    ECONOMIC DATA The flash Composite Purchasing Managers' Index for May will be released at 9:45 a.m. ET. New home sales report for April is schedule for release at 10:00 a.m. ET. The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on petroleum inventories in the U.S. will be released at 10:30 a.m. ET. The Treasury is set to auction 5-year notes at 1:00 p.m. ET. The Federal Open Market Committee will issue minutes of its meeting at 2:00 p.m. ET. Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari is set to speak at 2:15 p.m. ET. ANALYST RATINGS Deutsche Bank upgrades Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) to Buy from Hold; Raises Price Target to $55 from $52 Bernstein upgrades Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) to Outperform Longbow Research downgrades Shake Shack (NYSE: SHAK) to Neutral Stifel downgrades Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (NASDAQ: RRGB) to Hold, Lowers Price Target to $55

    This is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day — it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. To get the full version of this note every morning, click here.

Monday, March 18, 2019

Ujjivan Financial, Coal India fall 1-2% on interim dividend news


Shares of Ujjivan Financial Services and Coal India fell 1.2 percent intraday Friday after announcement of interim dividend.

The board of directors of Ujjivan Financial Services considered and declared an interim dividend of Rs 0.85 (i.e. 8.5 percent) per equity share of Rs 10 each, as per BSE filing.

The aforesaid interim dividend will be paid on or before March 29, 2019.

Coal India said in its BSE release that the board approved payment of second interim dividend for the financial year at Rs 5.85 per share of the face value of Rs 10 as recommended by the audit committee of the company.

related news D-Street Buzz: Nifty IT outshines led by TCS; ICICI Bank at new 52-week high, Zee Ent jumps Hindustan Unilever declines 2% on management rejig; analysts remain bullish

The date of payment of second interim dividend for 2018-19 is on and from March 29, 2019.

At 11:50 hrs Coal India was quoting at Rs 240.25, down Rs 3.10, or 1.27 percent on the BSE.

At 11:50 hrs Ujjivan Financial Services was quoting at Rs 336.25, down Rs 3.45, or 1.02 percent on the BSE.

For more market news, click here

First Published on Mar 15, 2019 12:06 pm

Friday, March 15, 2019

Top 5 China Stocks To Invest In Right Now

tags:FMCN,SINA,BIDU,TISA,ATAI,

Investors shouldn't worry over the latest round of trade policy retaliation between the U.S. and China, according to Goldman Sachs.

"Trade tensions represent a minimal risk to S&P 500 earnings in aggregate," David Kostin, Goldman's chief U.S. equity strategist, wrote in a note to clients Friday. "Trump Administration has floated the possibility of an additional $100 bn of tariffs [on China]. Our Washington, D.C. economists view this escalation as a negotiating tactic, but it increases the probability of disruptive announcements in coming weeks."

The strategist said imports from China only represent 3 percent of U.S. GDP, while exports to China constitute just 1 percent of the economy. Goldman's chief economist Jan Hatzius said on Monday if the proposed tariffs are implemented, it would impact U.S. inflation and GDP growth by less than 0.1 percentage point.

Top 5 China Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Focus Media Holding Limited(FMCN)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    An issue of Focus Media Holding Limited (NASDAQ:FMCN) bonds fell 0.9% against their face value during trading on Monday. The high-yield debt issue has a 7.25% coupon and will mature on April 1, 2023. The bonds in the issue are now trading at $99.13 and were trading at $98.13 last week. Price moves in a company’s bonds in credit markets sometimes anticipate parallel moves in its share price.

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    An issue of Focus Media Holding Limited (NASDAQ:FMCN) debt fell 1.7% against its face value during trading on Friday. The high-yield debt issue has a 7.5% coupon and is set to mature on April 1, 2025. The debt is now trading at $94.25 and was trading at $96.38 one week ago. Price changes in a company’s debt in credit markets sometimes predict parallel changes in its share price.

    WARNING: “Focus Media (FMCN) Bond Prices Fall 1.7%” was first published by Ticker Report and is the sole property of of Ticker Report. If you are reading this piece of content on another site, it was illegally copied and reposted in violation of US & international trademark and copyright legislation. The correct version of this piece of content can be read at https://www.tickerreport.com/banking-finance/4207523/focus-media-fmcn-bond-prices-fall-1-7.html.

    About Focus Media (NASDAQ:FMCN)

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    An issue of Focus Media Holding Limited (NASDAQ:FMCN) debt fell 1.1% against its face value during trading on Tuesday. The debt issue has a 7.5% coupon and is set to mature on April 1, 2025. The debt is now trading at $97.63 and was trading at $98.50 last week. Price changes in a company’s debt in credit markets sometimes anticipate parallel changes in its stock price.

Top 5 China Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Sina Corporation(SINA)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Lisa Levin] Gainers Cocrystal Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: COCP) rose 15.3 percent to $2.41 in pre-market trading after declining 25.09 percent on Thursday. Expedia Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) shares rose 10.7 percent to $117.75 in pre-market trading after the company reported stronger-than-expected earnings for its first quarter on Thursday. DMC Global Inc. (NASDAQ: BOOM) rose 10.6 percent to $35.00 in pre-market trading after reporting Q1 results. Genprex, Inc. (NASDAQ: GNPX) rose 10.2 percent to $12.12 in pre-market trading after climbing 86.76 percent on Thursday. Sprint Corporation (NYSE: S) shares rose 7 percent to $6.42 in pre-market trading on reports that the company has made progress on merger talks with T-Mobile. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) rose 6.9 percent to $1,621.95 in pre-market trading after the company posted upbeat results for its first quarter. The company sees second quarter operating income of $1.1 billion - $1.9 billion and sales of $51 billion - $54 billion. Riot Blockchain, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIOT) shares rose 5.5 percent to $7.88 in pre-market trading after gaining 1.49 percent on Thursday. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) rose 5.3 percent to $55.86 in pre-market trading as the company reported better-than-expected results for its first quarter and also raised its FY18 sales outlook. 8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT) rose 5.3 percent to $21.00 in pre-market trading. Southwestern Energy Company (NYSE: SWN) shares rose 5.1 percent to $4.75 in pre-market trading as the company reported better-than-expected earnings for its first quarter. Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. (NYSE: DO) rose 5 percent to $20.24 in pre-market trading. Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) rose 4.5 percent to $249.50 in pre-market trading following upbeat Q1 profit. Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: CHTR) rose 4.3 percent to $311 in pre-market trading. Charter is expected to release quarterly earnings today. SINA Corporation (NASDAQ: SINA) shares rose 3.9 pe
  • [By Steve Symington]

    SINA (NASDAQ:SINA) announced solid fourth-quarter 2018 results on Tuesday morning, once again highlighting the benefits of the Chinese internet technology company's burgeoning Weibo microblogging platform.

  • [By Leo Sun]

    Shares of Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) and its parent SINA (NASDAQ:SINA) tumbled 14% and 10%, respectively, after posting their first quarter results on May 9. The sell-off was surprising, since both companies easily beat analyst expectations.

  • [By Lisa Levin] Companies Reporting Before The Bell Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE: BUD) is estimated to report quarterly earnings at $0.89 per share on revenue of $13.06 billion. SINA Corporation (NASDAQ: SINA) is expected to report quarterly earnings at $0.42 per share on revenue of $433.32 million. Weibo Corporation (NASDAQ: WB) is projected to report quarterly earnings at $0.47 per share on revenue of $342.39 million. Ameren Corporation (NYSE: AEE) is estimated to report quarterly earnings at $0.57 per share on revenue of $1.55 billion. Mylan N.V. (NASDAQ: MYL) is projected to report quarterly earnings at $0.98 per share on revenue of $2.75 billion. Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CNK) is estimated to report quarterly earnings at $1.31 per share on revenue of $1.51 billion. ADT Inc. (NYSE: ADT) is expected to report quarterly earnings at $0.24 per share on revenue of $1.11 billion. Coty Inc. (NYSE: COTY) is projected to report quarterly earnings at $0.13 per share on revenue of $2.18 billion. Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: PNK) is estimated to report quarterly earnings at $0.31 per share on revenue of $644.94 million. Conduent Incorporated (NYSE: CNDT) is estimated to report quarterly earnings at $0.21 per share on revenue of $1.44 billion. Delphi Technologies PLC (NYSE: DLPH) is projected to report quarterly earnings at $1.16 per share on revenue of $1.25 billion. Office Depot, Inc. (NASDAQ: ODP) is expected to report quarterly earnings at $0.08 per share on revenue of $2.72 billion. Global Partners LP (NYSE: GLP) is estimated to report quarterly earnings at $0.13 per share on revenue of $2.33 billion. Wolverine World Wide, Inc. (NYSE: WWW) is projected to report quarterly earnings at $0.37 per share on revenue of $530.99 million. Performance Food Group Company (NYSE: PFGC) is expected to report quarterly earnings at $0.32 per share on revenue of $4.46 billion. Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) is projected to report
  • [By Steve Symington]

    Shares of SINA Corp. (NASDAQ:SINA) were down 10.2% as of 3:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday despite strong first-quarter 2018 results from the Chinese internet media company.

Top 5 China Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Baidu Inc.(BIDU)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Steve Symington, John Bromels, and Keith Noonan]

    So, we asked three top Motley Fool contributors to each discuss a stock that they believe is absurdly cheap right now. Read on to learn what they had to say about JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), Apache Corporation (NYSE:APA), and Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU).

  • [By Billy Duberstein]

    There are three clear leaders riding this wave, all of which have ties to the "big three" of China, or the "BAT": Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), and Tencent (NASDAQOTH:TCEHY). For investors interested in riding the Chinese streaming video trend, the following are definitely the stocks to own.

  • [By Rick Munarriz]

    One of last week's big winners was iQiyi (NASDAQ:IQ). Shares of China's leading streaming video provider moved 13.47% higher for the week, fueled largely by a general bounce in Chinese growth stocks. iQiyi also benefited from being tapped for a pair of prolific company lists, but it was essentially a big week for China's dot-com darlings to recover after tariffs-related weakness in recent weeks. Even a slight diss within a bullish analyst note on Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) couldn't hold the stock back. 

  • [By Chris Hill]

    Hill: We'll stick with video for a minute or two longer. Now that iQiyi is public -- you've talked about this before, is this of interest to you? Is this a stock you've already bought, or it's on the watch list? And for those who don't know, iQiyi was essentially spun out of Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU). So, the Google of China spins out the Netflix of China. And as you said before, it seems like, if nothing else, it's a win for Baidu shareholders, because Baidu still has the ownership stake.

Top 5 China Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Top Image Systems Ltd.(TISA)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Top Image Systems (TISA)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

  • [By Money Morning Staff Reports]

    Before we get to our latest pick, here are last week's top-performing penny stocks:

    Penny Stock Sector Current Share Price Last Week's Gain Melinta Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: MLNT) Healthcare $1.74 104.01% Pernix Therapeutics Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PTX) Healthcare $0.83 84.40% Top Image Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: TISA) Healthcare $0.82 59.85% Jason Industries Inc. (NASDAQ: JASN) Healthcare $2.21 58.99% Maxwell Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: MXWL) Financial $4.66 51.79% Marathon Patent Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA) Healthcare $0.52 51.47% Forward Pharma A/S (NASDAQ: FWP) Basic Materials $1.53 43.57% Dixie Group Inc. (NASDAQ: DXYN) Healthcare $1.40 42.86% Trevena Inc. (NASDAQ: TRVN) Services $1.41 39.60% Alliance MMA Inc. (NASDAQ: AMMA) Healthcare $4.95 36.18%

    Don't Miss Out: The Treasury is sitting on an $11.1 billion cash pile, and a loophole entitles Americans to a sizable portion. Some are collecting $1,795, $3,000, or $5,000 every month thanks to this powerful investment…

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Top Image Systems (TISA)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

  • [By Shane Hupp]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on Top Image Systems (TISA)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

Top 5 China Stocks To Invest In Right Now: ATA Inc.(ATAI)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Paul Ausick]

    ATA Inc. (NASDAQ: ATAI) traded down about 14% Monday to set a new 52-week low of $0.82, based on revalued shares that closed at $0.72 on Friday but traded up about 250% on Monday at $2.53. Volume was more than 200 times the daily average of around 42,000. You’re on your own here to figure this one out.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

For T-Mobile Stock, Optimism Reigns After Sprint

T-Mobile (NASDAQ:TMUS) stock has spent the last months fighting to complete its merger with Sprint (NYSE:S), a deal that has become a partisan Washington soap opera. The question for investors is, what happens after the merger goes through?

How the T-Mobile Stock Merger Changes the Landscape for Wireless CarriersHow the T-Mobile Stock Merger Changes the Landscape for Wireless CarriersSource: Mike Mozart via Flickr (modified)

CEO John Legere has been grilled by Democrats over the company’s use of the Trump Hotel, over where it gets its equipment and over what it does with data it collects from handsets.

But the deal will likely get done, if only because Democrats are now so opposed to it.

Legere’s Fight for TMUS Stock

Democrats argue the merger will cut the number of national wireless competitors from 4 to 3. T-Mobile and Sprint argue that three strong competitors are better than two strong and two weak ones. They also point to the wireless ambitions of competitors like Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA).

Throughout this decade, AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) have each controlled one-third of the U.S. wireless market. T-Mobile and Sprint share most of the other third. In arguing for the merger, Sprint notes the two larger companies have 93% of the industry’s cash flow, a shared monopoly the new T-Mobile would break.

The main change this decade has been T-Mobile’s rise at Sprint’s expense. The trend wore down Masayoshi Son, who took a controlling interest in Sprint in 2012 and had wanted his company to control any merger. Son is now focused on his $100 billion “Vision Fund,” buying big positions in companies like Uber.

Deutsche Telekom AG (OTCMKTS:DTEGY) owns about two-thirds of TMUS stock. The Sprint deal will reduce that.  The combined company would be mainly foreign-owned, but no one foreign entity would have control.

The focus would shift to Legere, which is where he likes it. After taking command in 2012, he grew out his hair, threw leather jackets over t-shirts, and began the “un-carrier” campaign that finally brought Sprint to the table as junior partner. Legere has become an adept politician, and like any politician, he has spent the merger campaign making promises.

T-Mobile Will Be a Spectrum Buyer

Most of those promises have involved 5G, an encoding technology that lets carriers use a host of new frequencies. It can build markets from TV and intelligent devices to self-driving cars.

As part of its merger effort, TMUS stock is promising more, cheaper bandwidth for rural customers, a wireless replacement for cable or satellite TV, and stable prices.

To make this happen, Legere is promising to buy more spectrum, in the 24 GHz and 28 GHz range.

Using the new spectrum means lower power radios, but many more base stations since the waves attenuate so fast. T-Mobile is also fighting to get more C-Band spectrum, at between 4-8 GHz, against an alliance of satellite companies. 

The Bottom Line

Right now, T-Mobile shares sell at a premium price to earnings multiple of 21.5, despite paying no dividend. AT&T and Verizon pay dividends yielding 6.5% and 4.5%, respectively.

The reason for the price is growth. T-Mobile revenues grew 3% last year. Investors are betting the Sprint merger will go through, giving it more than the $45 billion in combined operating cash flow the two companies earned last year.

T-Mobile is also seen as a more entrepreneurial company than any other wireless outfit. If a bus ran John Legere over tomorrow, the stock would tank. Fortunately, Legere prefers limousines.

To turn his big plans into reality, however, T-Mobile is going to need executive depth. Promises without execution are called failure.

Dana Blankenhorn http://www.danablankenhorn.com is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a new mystery thriller, The Reluctant Detective Finds Her Family, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this article.

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Tuesday, March 12, 2019

15 Growth Stocks to Buy Under 15x Earnings

Finding cheap stocks to buy in this market is a challenge. Broad market indices aren’t far from all-time highs. Yet risks abound. The bull market has been going strong for a decade. Trade battles still haven’t been resolved. And at some point, the U.S. macroeconomic situation will reverse.

But there are opportunities out there, and some stocks remain attractive. These 15 stocks all potentially fit that bill for one simple reason. All 15 trade at less than 15x earnings, yet those earnings are growing. That means they provide a solid combination of value and growth.

These stocks — like the market as a whole — aren’t without risk. In many cases, there are reasons investors are keeping valuations low. But those valuations are low enough that those risks are priced in, while the potential rewards are not.

With all of that in mind, here are 15 growth stocks with low P/E ratios.


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Broadcom (AVGO) growth stocksBroadcom (AVGO) growth stocksSource: Shutterstock

Broadcom (AVGO)

In a chip sector seeing quite a bit of pressure at the moment, Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) seems to be holding up just fine. AVGO stock briefly touched an all-time high last month, while most semiconductor stocks trade well off 2018 peaks.

Even with the gains so far, however, Broadcom stock still looks attractive. An 8% pullback makes the stock even cheaper: AVGO now trades at just 11.6x FY19 (ending October) earnings-per-share estimates.

Yet earnings continue to grow. Operating margins are expanding, with FY19 guidance suggesting a 51% adjusted figure — one of the highest in any industry. And analysts are seeing even better growth next year, with earnings rising nearly 15%.

There are risks here. Semiconductor stocks are usually cyclical, which suggests Broadcom earnings could peak in the next couple of years. Few companies have more impressively executed in terms of M&A over the years, but that success may not last forever.

Still, those risks look worth taking. Broadcom’s diversified base limits cyclical effects and increases exposure to long-term trends like Internet of Things. With the Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) acquisition abandoned, Broadcom likely will stick to smaller deals. This has been one of the best stocks in tech for years now — there’s not much reason to suggest that will change.


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ABM Industries (ABM) growth stocksABM Industries (ABM) growth stocks

ABM Industries (ABM)

Facility services provider ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) isn’t exciting. The company provides outsourced labor and solutions for janitorial services, landscaping, parking and other needs. Margins are relatively thin; growth is steady but not spectacular.

But the same has been true of the returns provided by ABM stock. The Dividend Champion has returned nearly 11% per year over the past quarter century, including dividends. That’s true even with the stock 30% off 2017 levels.

The concerns of late have been driven by worries about rising labor costs, and ABM’s ability to pass along those costs. The stock dipped 8% after earnings last week. But the selloff seems overdone: fiscal Q1 numbers were fine, and ABM’s margins, while still thin, are holding up.

This is a stock that will take some patience, and not one that is likely to produce eye-popping returns. But ABM trades at less than 15x FY20 EPS estimates, while growth should continue for some time. And the nature of the business provides protection against a cyclical downturn, which actually could help ABM by pushing labor rates (and availability) back down. All told, ABM looks too cheap and likely to start producing 10%+ returns again in the not too distant future.


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Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) growth stocksBank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) growth stocksSource: Shutterstock

Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM)

To be fair, most bank stocks, not just Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), seem reasonably cheap at the moment. Big bank stocks are generally trading at 10x 2019 earnings estimates, and smaller banks are in the same range.

The obvious concern is that the economic cycle will turn at some point, bringing bank profits down as a result. Optimism toward the sector after the 2016 U.S. presidential election has dissipated, though the sector has done better in 2019.

There still should be more upside ahead. Regulations put in place after the financial crisis have been criticized in some quarters for limiting growth. But — as far as we can tell — they likely also limit risk. In the meantime, earnings continue to grow.

BAC and JPM continue to the best bets in the industry, as I argued in December. The ‘smart money’ seems to agree. For investors who see the current economic strength continuing, these two stocks should be on the top of their shopping list.


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Photronics (PLAB) growth stocksPhotronics (PLAB) growth stocksSource: Shutterstock

Photronics (PLAB)

The risk with Photronics (NASDAQ:PLAB) is that it’s cheap, but will always be cheap. The company manufactures photomasks used in semiconductor production. It’s a difficult, cyclical and capital-intensive business, which is one reason why PLAB has mostly traded sideways for years now, and usually receives low multiples.

But there’s still an intriguing case for PLAB stock at the moment, which is why I personally own the stock. PLAB trades at 16.5x trailing twelve-month EPS, but the multiple drops to 13x backing out net cash. New facilities in China are coming online this year, positioning the company as the leading supplier to a growing domestic semiconductor industry.

The risks here are obvious, given recent weakness in both semiconductor stocks and Chinese equities. PLAB itself has pulled back after a decent, but not quite spectacular, earnings report last month. But below $10, PLAB is still too cheap. I argued last year that the stock could double, and looking a few years out, that’s still a possibility.


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Aaron's (AAN) growth stocksAaron's (AAN) growth stocksSource: Dwight Burdette via WikiMedia Commons

Aaron’s (AAN)

To be honest, I’m not entirely sold on Aaron’s (NYSE:AAN). The legacy rent-to-own business has struggled for years now. And there’s obvious risk in the company’s Progressive Leasing business, which provides financing to customers of retailers like Signet Jewelers (NYSE:SIG) and Conn’s (NASDAQ:CONN).

But with AAN trading at 14x the midpoint of 2019 EPS guidance, there are few stocks at a similar valuation with as much upside in the bullish scenario. The Aaron’s concept is starting to show some signs of life, with same-store revenues guided to be flat to up 2% in 2019. Progressive has a massive opportunity in front of it, and this year should drive over 60% of profit. A clean balance sheet provides room for share buybacks, increasing returns and boosting EPS.

Again, there are risks here. But if Progressive is what the company believes it can be, and Aaron’s can start driving organic profit growth, this is a stock that could show huge returns for years to come.


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Southwest Airlines (LUV) growth stocksSouthwest Airlines (LUV) growth stocksSource: Jerry Landers via Flickr (Modified)

Southwest Airlines (LUV)

Airline stocks like Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) have struggled in the last couple of years. Southwest stock itself was hit by a couple of factors last month. Grounded planes — possibly due to a labor dispute — will hit first quarter revenue. And Goldman Sachs downgraded the stock, citing higher costs related to its new service to Hawaii.

But even Goldman admits that from a long-term perspective, LUV looks attractive. The firm is right. Southwest long has been one of the best domestic operators. It performed quite well in 2018, including a strong fourth quarter. LUV stock may see some near-term turbulence, but at less than 10x forward earnings, it looks far too cheap.


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Central Garden & Pet (CENT) growth stocksCentral Garden & Pet (CENT) growth stocksSource: Shutterstock

Central Garden & Pet (CENT)

Central Garden & Pet (NASDAQ:CENT, NASDAQ:CENTA) is trading near its lowest levels in over two years. The key catalyst of late has been a disappointing fiscal Q1 report that sent the stock down some 22%.

But the selloff looks like an overreaction. Central has seen nice growth in both its Garden and Pet businesses. Debt and equity offerings last year leave the company with some $500 million targeted for M&A; Central’s current results include the costs of the offerings but no benefits from the spend. And yet CENTA (the cheaper of the two classes) now trades just under 15x the company’s FY19 EPS guidance of $1.80 or higher.

For a company that has grown earnings steadily in recent years, and has solid market share in two stable, if not spectacular, consumer categories, that valuation is far too low. As Central works through the issues that hit Q1, and as it puts that cash to work, CENT and CENTA shares should recover.


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Knoll (KNL) growth stocksKnoll (KNL) growth stocksSource: Montgomery County Planning Commission via Flickr (Modified)

Knoll (KNL)

The concern when it comes to Knoll (NYSE:KNL) is that the company’s exposure to office furniture represents a real risk. The sector didn’t perform all that well as the economy rebounded. Lower demand due to “open office” trends and increased telecommuting offset higher spending from medium- and large-sized companies.

But the case for Knoll is based on the idea that the office furniture side of the business is becoming less important. The company’s residential businesses are growing, including high-end offerings like Holly Hunt and Muuto. They’re more profitable as well and shouldn’t see quite the same “cyclicality” as the office furniture industry generally does.

At just over 10x 2019 EPS estimates, Knoll is priced as if its business is headed for a decline. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however. Rather, investors can own a high-end, well-managed, diversified business at an attractive multiple — and with a 3% dividend yield.


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Brunswick (BC), MasterCraft (MCFT), Malibu Boats (MBUU) and Johnson Outdoors (JOUT) growth stocksBrunswick (BC), MasterCraft (MCFT), Malibu Boats (MBUU) and Johnson Outdoors (JOUT) growth stocksSource: a.dombrowski via Flickr

Brunswick (BC), MasterCraft (MCFT), Malibu Boats (MBUU) and Johnson Outdoors (JOUT)

Boating stocks, too, are valued as if earnings are going to peak. That might actually make some sense. The economic recovery will slow at some point. There are concerns that millennials may be less interested in motorized watersports (as opposed to kayaks or paddleboards). And potential boat-sharing models (something like Uber for boats) could impact demand.

But industry sales still remain well below past peaks. And valuations in the sector suggest opportunity for investors who believe the industry will continue to grow — and those valuations create a wealth of targets.

Brunswick (NYSE:BC) probably is the safest play, given a broader international reach and a growing reliance on less-cyclical parts and accessories revenue. Malibu Boats (NASDAQ:MBUU) has been the best grower — and the best-performing stock — of late, and should be the choice for investors seeing renewed confidence toward the space.

MasterCraft Boat Holdings (NASDAQ:MCFT) is the cheapest of the group. And Johnson Outdoors (NASDAQ:JOUT) is a bet on fishing growth, with smaller businesses in camping and diving supplies.

All four stocks look somewhat attractive. Investors of all types may have their own particular favorite.


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Omnova Solutions (OMN) growth stocksOmnova Solutions (OMN) growth stocksSource: Shutterstock

Omnova Solutions (OMN)

Chemical manufacturer Omnova Solutions (NYSE:OMN) is an intriguing turnaround opportunity. Operations have improved notably under a new CEO. Long-running declines in carpet and paper products are starting to fade as those categories become a small portion of total revenue.

The big problem is that history colors any bull case for OMN. This is a stock that was spun off at the beginning of this century – yet hit an all-time high of just $12 last year.

But it’s possible that this time is different, to use the four most dangerous words in investing. Management has changed. Paper and carpet headwinds finally are moderating. And below $8, OMN trades at a notable discount to those highs despite a decent fiscal 2018 performance. At 12x FY19 EPS, it might be worth seeing if Omnova finally can inflect upward.


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Target (TGT) growth stocksTarget (TGT) growth stocksSource: Mike Mozart via Flickr (Modified)

Target (TGT)

Target (NYSE:TGT) is a stock that I’ve been skeptical of for quite a while and I’m still not completely convinced of the bull case. But it’s much easier to turn bullish after the company’s blowout Q4 report earlier this month. Target’s omnichannel strategy has required billions of dollars in investments, but 5% same-store sales growth seems to show that spend is worth it.

Meanwhile, Target is guiding for 7-12% EPS growth in fiscal 2019 (ending January 2020), as operating margins are expected to expand. Yet the stock trades for just 13x that guidance.

Competition remains a risk, with Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) building out their own omnichannel strategies. A cyclical swing downward could impact demand. But Target has done a much better job the last few years becoming a real rival to those other retail giants. It hasn’t quite been rewarded enough.

As of this writing, Vince Martin is long shares of Photronics. He has no positions in any other sec

Monday, March 11, 2019

Duality Advisers LP Buys Shares of 63,770 Nucor Co. (NUE)

Duality Advisers LP bought a new position in Nucor Co. (NYSE:NUE) in the 4th quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm bought 63,770 shares of the basic materials company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,304,000.

Several other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of NUE. Russell Investments Group Ltd. grew its stake in Nucor by 65.5% during the third quarter. Russell Investments Group Ltd. now owns 177,419 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $11,232,000 after buying an additional 70,211 shares in the last quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. grew its stake in Nucor by 23.0% during the third quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 224,557 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $14,268,000 after buying an additional 41,917 shares in the last quarter. Victory Capital Management Inc. grew its stake in Nucor by 290.1% during the third quarter. Victory Capital Management Inc. now owns 185,401 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $11,764,000 after buying an additional 137,871 shares in the last quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC grew its stake in Nucor by 66.7% during the third quarter. Private Advisor Group LLC now owns 21,232 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $1,347,000 after buying an additional 8,495 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Commerce Bank grew its stake in Nucor by 9.5% during the third quarter. Commerce Bank now owns 10,123 shares of the basic materials company’s stock worth $642,000 after buying an additional 877 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 76.28% of the company’s stock.

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NUE opened at $57.79 on Friday. Nucor Co. has a 1-year low of $49.79 and a 1-year high of $68.97. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.41, a quick ratio of 1.45 and a current ratio of 3.08. The company has a market capitalization of $18.26 billion, a PE ratio of 7.58, a P/E/G ratio of 0.85 and a beta of 1.51.

Nucor (NYSE:NUE) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, January 29th. The basic materials company reported $2.07 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.93 by $0.14. Nucor had a net margin of 9.42% and a return on equity of 24.57%. The company had revenue of $6.30 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $6.29 billion. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.65 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 23.6% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts expect that Nucor Co. will post 5.98 earnings per share for the current year.

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, May 10th. Stockholders of record on Friday, March 29th will be paid a $0.40 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, March 28th. This represents a $1.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.77%. Nucor’s payout ratio is currently 21.00%.

In other news, Chairman John J. Ferriola sold 87,719 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 31st. The shares were sold at an average price of $60.35, for a total value of $5,293,841.65. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Company insiders own 0.80% of the company’s stock.

A number of brokerages have issued reports on NUE. UBS Group set a $59.00 price objective on shares of Nucor and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, December 10th. Zacks Investment Research downgraded shares of Nucor from a “hold” rating to a “strong sell” rating in a research note on Friday, February 1st. ValuEngine downgraded shares of Nucor from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Thursday, February 14th. Cowen began coverage on shares of Nucor in a research note on Tuesday, January 8th. They set an “outperform” rating and a $62.00 price objective on the stock. Finally, KeyCorp reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $72.00 price objective on shares of Nucor in a research note on Friday, November 30th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and ten have issued a buy rating to the company. The company currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $71.45.

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Nucor Profile

Nucor Corporation manufactures and sells steel and steel products in the United States and internationally. It operates in three segments: Steel Mills, Steel Products, and Raw Materials. The Steel Mills segment produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and galvanized sheet steel products; hollow structural section steel tubing, steel electrical conduit, plate steel, and structural steel products; bar steel products, such as blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing and merchant bars, wire rods, and special bar quality; and tubular and plate steel products.

See Also: Bid-Ask Spread

Want to see what other hedge funds are holding NUE? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Nucor Co. (NYSE:NUE).

Institutional Ownership by Quarter for Nucor (NYSE:NUE)

Sunday, March 10, 2019

4 Stocks Join Ben Graham Net-Net Screener Friday

&l;p&g;Year to date, the market has gifted investors a 9.92% return, but it remains off 5.73% from the start of the fourth quarter. While many investors are enjoying a lift in their stocks, the Ben Graham Screener, which finds net-nets, has been active.

&l;img class=&q;dam-image getty size-large wp-image-1134220853&q; src=&q;https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/dam/imageserve/1134220853/960x0.jpg?fit=scale&q; data-height=&q;678&q; data-width=&q;960&q;&g; Ben Graham developed the net-net strategy as a way to find undervalued stocks and kept a diversified portfolio of them.

By the definition of Ben Graham, the founder of value investing, a stock becomes a net-net when its price falls below the outcome of a simple formula: its cash and short-term investments, plus a conservative estimate of its accounts receivable and total inventory, minus its total liabilities (omitting other assets such as land, equipment and intangible assets, and focusing on only liquid and tangible asset value). He called the result &a;ldquo;net-net working&a;rdquo; capital. Mathematically, his formula looks as follows:

Net-net working capital (NNWC) = cash and short-term investments + (0.75 * accounts receivable) + (0.5 * inventory) - total liabilities

Graham developed the method to buy stocks for less than their liquidation value, and he usually held many. In his seminal book, &a;ldquo;The Intelligent Investor,&a;rdquo; he wrote:

&a;ldquo;The idea here was to acquire as many issues as possible at a cost for each of less than their book value in terms of net-current-assets alone &a;ndash; i.e., giving no value to the plant account and other assets. Our purchases were made typically at two-thirds or less of such stripped-down asset value. In most years we carried a wide diversification here &a;ndash; at least 100 different issues.&a;rdquo;

Stocks that meet these criteria tend to perform well. One study found that over one 13-year period, they returned 29.4% on average, compared to an 11.5% rise in the S&a;amp;P 500.

Typically, bull market environments make net-nets scarce. Market volatility, as seen recently, tends to unearth more. GuruFocus makes finding them easy through its&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;Ben Graham Net-Net Working Capital Screener. The screener also recently got an update to further simplify the search.

&l;em&g;Note: The Ben Graham Net-Net Working Capital Screener extends its reach to stocks that trade between 100-300% of net-net working capital to help generate more ideas, and the stocks from Friday fell into that range.&l;/em&g;

Friday, the screener identified four new stocks that met its criteria: Diffusion Pharmaceuticals Inc., Apyx Medical Corp., Electrocore Inc. and Spherix Inc.

&l;strong&g;Diffusion Pharmaceuticals Inc.&l;/strong&g;

Diffusion Pharmaceuticals is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based biotech and drug company developing treatments for cancer, stroke and other conditions that involve oxygen deprivation. The stock rose 233% year to date and fell 29.29% over the past year. Its stock price dropped 28.57% Friday to close at $5 per share. Its net-net working capital is $2.47.

No investors GuruFocus tracks own the stock except&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;Jim Simons&a;rsquo; Renaissance Technologies, which reports 51,840 shares after reducing the position by 83.86% in the fourth quarter.

Diffusion Pharmaceuticals Inc. has a market cap of $17.730 million and annual average earnings growth of 28.20% over the past 10 years.

&l;strong&g;Apyx Medical Corp. (APYX)&l;/strong&g;

Apyx Medical Corp. makes medical devices used in cosmetic surgery. Year to date, its stock rose 8.97%, with a 3.98% decline Friday to close at $7 a share. The company has net-net working capital of $2.39 a share.

Three investors GuruFocus tracks hold shares of Apyx Medical:&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Chuck+Royce&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Chuck Royce&l;/a&g;&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;(&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Chuck+Royce&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Trades&l;/a&g;,&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/holdings.php?GuruName=Chuck+Royce&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Portfolio&l;/a&g;),&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Jim+Simons&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Jim Simons&l;/a&g;&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;(&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Jim+Simons&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Trades&l;/a&g;,&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/holdings.php?GuruName=Jim+Simons&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Portfolio&l;/a&g;) and&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Murray+Stahl&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Murray Stahl&l;/a&g;&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;(&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Murray+Stahl&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Trades&l;/a&g;,&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/holdings.php?GuruName=Murray+Stahl&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Portfolio&l;/a&g;).

Apyx Medical Corp. has a market cap of $232.430 million with a price-earnings ratio of 3.67 and price-sales ratio of 4.07.

&l;strong&g;Electrocore Inc. (ECOR)&l;/strong&g;

Electrocore Inc. makes medical devices for the treatment of pain and chronic conditions. Year to date, its stock price rose 13.92%. Friday, it dropped 6.67% to $7.56 a share at close. The company has net-net working capital of $2.57 a share.

Of investors GuruFocus tracks, only&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;Steven Cohen&a;nbsp;owns a stake in the company, with 200,000 shares after adding 16.69% in the fourth quarter.

Electrocore Inc. has a market cap of $222.640 million with a price-sales ratio of 397.91.

&l;strong&g;Spherix Inc. (SPEX)&l;/strong&g;

Spherix is a patent company focused on intellectual property. Its stock price gained 8.22% year to date and declined 4.33% Friday to close at 75 cents a share. The company has net-net working capital of 26 cents.

The sole investor GuruFocus tracks with a stake in Spherix is&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Jim+Simons&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Jim Simons&l;/a&g;&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;(&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Jim+Simons&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Trades&l;/a&g;,&l;span&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;&l;a href=&q;http://www.gurufocus.com/holdings.php?GuruName=Jim+Simons&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Portfolio&l;/a&g;)&a;rsquo; Renaissance Technologies. He held 92,600 shares after increasing the position 190.28% in the fourth quarter.

Spherix Inc. has a market cap of $6.720 million and price-sales ratio of 17.55. Spherix Inc. had annual average earnings growth of 60.40% over the past 10 years.

This article originally appeared &l;a href=&q;https://www.gurufocus.com/news/829990&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;HERE&l;/a&g;.&l;/p&g;

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Spot the next 'HDFC Bank'?


Highlights:
- Axis Bank has the potential to take over the baton from HDFC Bank
- The bank has best in class liability profile
- It is diversifying and de-risking asset book
- The new management has eyes set at 18 percent RoE
- The focus on risk-adjusted return to ensure quality
- Valuation gap with HDFC Bank to narrow

-------------------------------------------------

The worst is over for Axis Bank (CMP: Rs 732, Market Cap: Rs 188,247 crore) and it could well become the next HDFC Bank for the stock market.

In the past twenty years, HDFC Bank has demonstrated an impeccable track record of execution and the brand is now synonymous with consistency. In this period, its profit grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.5 percent, and market capitalisation at a CAGR of 34 percent.

Axis Bank, like most of its peers, could not escape the non-performing asset mess. But the crisis has forced a change of guard – which is a game changer in our view - as well as a rapid clean-up of its balance sheet. That will allow it to embark on a growth journey with quality.

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Like most Indian lenders, Axis Bank witnessed a sharp deterioration in its asset quality. Its gross and net NPA that was hovering around 1.67 percent and 0.7 percent respectively in March 2016 shot up to 6.77 percent and 3.4 percent respectively by March 2018 driven largely by corporate slippages. The bank also reported a divergence with the RBI audit on recognising bad assets for FY17.

However, the clean-up led to recognition of the bulk of the stress (low-rated corporate portfolio down from Rs 27,411 crore in Q1 FY17 to Rs 7645 crore now). While higher provisioning did result in elevated credit costs, it also led to an improvement in the provision coverage ratio to 75 percent, one of the best in the industry. Going forward, with the rating downgrades largely behind, we expect normalisation of slippages as well as credit cost. That should greatly support incremental earnings.

Best in class liability franchise

Over the years, Axis has leveraged its "branch banking model" to build a robust liability profile. The share of granular deposits is high with low-cost CASA (current and savings account) and retail term deposits close to 80 percent of total deposits.

While CASA deposits have stagnated in recent times and remains an area of focus for the new management, the bank, nevertheless, has done a commendable job on the liability side. Its market share in the banking system's deposits has risen from 3.7 percent in March 2016 to 4.3 percent in December 2018; its incremental market share in the system's deposits in the past one year was a high 9.7 percent. Incidentally, in the current environment, where deposit growth is lagging credit growth, Axis Bank stands out with a respectable credit to deposit ratio of 92 percent.

Axis bank 1Source: Company

Diversifying and de-risking the lending book

The composition of the loan book is changing. The share of retail loans that stood at 27.4 percent in March 2013 rose to 49 percent in December 2018. Retail and SME together constitute 62 percent of the portfolio now. The bank has been broad-basing its retail offering with the addition of high-yielding products like personal loans, loans against property, credit cards etc. while trying to minimize risks by cross-selling to existing deposit customers, sourcing customers through branches and using analytics for underwriting.

De-risking efforts have gathered pace in non-retail as well, with 86 percent of the SME exposure rated at least SME3 and 82 percent of corporate exposure rated A or better. The corporate banking book is tilting in favour of working capital. The fall in the ratio of risk-weighted assets to total assets stands testimony to the gradual de-risking of the book.

With the competitive scenario weakening, in view of the stress in PSU banks and funding constraints of NBFCs, Axis Bank with its superior funding costs is in a vantage position to expand its loan book (both in corporate as well as retail)  without on-boarding excessive risk and maintain an upwards trajectory in its interest margin.

Fee income: Room to improve

Fee composition is showing stability with 79 percent coming from retail and transaction banking. However, the ratio of core fees to assets at 1.1 percent suggests that there is enough headroom for improvement.

The new management could be the game changer

Axis Bank has recently seen a change of guard with Amitabh Chaudhry (ex-Managing Director and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance) taking over from Shikha Sharma from January 1. We see this as a potential re-rating trigger for the bank should his articulated strategy pans out.

While growth, profitability and sustainability are the cornerstone of this strategy, what appears to be reassuring and has a striking resemblance with the HDFC group's ethos is the focus on risk adjusted return on capital (RaRoc). The appointment of Deepak Maheshwari (formerly Group Head of Corporate Credit Risk at HDFC Bank) as the Chief Credit Officer is the first step in overhauling the underwriting processes of the bank. Several other senior management changes are being effected as well to implement the stated strategy.

Extensive use of technology, effective sweating of assets, focus on CASA (current account-savings account) and fee income and reduction in credit costs below historical average are some of the other key areas of focus with the objective of improving profitability on a sustainable basis and reaching a return on equity (RoE) of 18 percent in the next three years (by FY22).

Subsidiaries: Untapped potential

A meaningful scale up of subsidiaries is also an area of attention. So far Axis Bank's share price does not factor in any contribution from subsidiaries and this remains a probable upside. For Axis Bank, the acquisition of FreeCharge remains a potent tool to capture digitally savvy customers. The bank plans to scale up capital market-linked businesses like Axis AMC, Axis Securities and Axis Capital, organically as well as inorganically. Axis Finance, the non-banking finance subsidiary, also has strong growth plans ahead. Finally, with an ex-insurance chief at the helm, the possibility of Axis Bank getting into manufacturing of insurance (from the present distribution only model) cannot be ruled out.

Valuation discount to HDFC Bank could narrow

Axis Bank 2

The bank had last raised capital (Rs 11,626 crore) in 2017 and has adequate resources (Capital Adequacy Ratio 16.4 percent with CET 1 11.77 percent) for growth. While there are several weak spots that warrant immediate attention, should the management succeed in addressing majority of them, the earnings traction and re-rating could be meaningful. Despite the 32 percent rally in the stock in the past one year, shares are valued at 2.1 times FY21 estimated book, a discount to HDFC Bank's valuation at three times FY21 estimated book. Should the journey to achieving 18 percent RoE pans out, we expect the valuation gap to narrow.

For more research articles, visit our Moneycontrol Research page

Disclaimer: Moneycontrol Research analysts do not hold positions in the companies discussed here First Published on Mar 8, 2019 09:48 am

Friday, March 8, 2019

Okta, Inc. (OKTA) Q4 2019 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Image source: The Motley Fool.

Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA) Q4 2019 Earnings Conference CallMarch 7, 2019 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Okta fourth-quarter 2019 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Bill Losch.

Please go ahead, sir.

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Okta's fiscal fourth-quarter and fiscal full-year 2019 financial results. I'm Bill Losch, chief financial officer at Okta. With me on today's call are Todd McKinnon, Okta's co-founder and chief executive officer; and Frederic Kerrest, the company's co-founder and chief operating officer.

Today's call will include forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding our financial outlook, our market positioning and our ability to close and the benefits that may be derived from our pending acquisition. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements represent our management's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date made. Information on factors that could affect the company's financial results is included in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including the sections titled risk factors and its previously filed quarterly report on Form 10-Q and its annual report Form 10-K that will be filed for the 2019 fiscal year.

In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are in addition to and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures and discussions of limitations of using non-GAAP measures versus their closest GAAP equivalence is available in our earnings release. You can also find more detailed information in our supplemental financial materials which included trended financial statement and key metrics posted on our investor relations website.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Todd McKinnon. Todd?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Bill, and thanks, everyone for taking the time to join us today. We finished fiscal 2019 on a high note with our strongest quarter ever with total revenue growing 50%, subscription revenue growing 53% and calculated billings growing 52% year over year. We generated positive free cash flow of $4.8 million as our margin improved 7 percentage points year over year. Our results capped off a strong year of growth and significantly improving operating leverage for Okta.

We added a record 500 net new customers in the quarter, bringing our total customer count to over 6,100. And the number of customers who spent over $100,000 a year with us on an annual basis now totals 1,038, an increase of 50% year over year and a record add of 101. This momentum is being fueled by the rapid and concurrent growth of three massive technology trends: cloud, digital transformation, and security. Identity plays a central and critical role in each of these areas.

As organizations recognize this, they're turning to Okta because we can help them drive their most important initiatives that makes the most sense for their business. I'll share a few customer examples from the quarter that highlight the momentum that we're seeing. First, a Fortune 10 company was an exciting workforce and customer identity win for us in the quarter. Okta will be the identity standard for the company across its complex hybrid environment, improving access for its employees, partners and customers.

Okta was selected for its deep integrations with the company's existing solutions, including Oracle, Apogee and Pivotal. Okta will help reduce cost by replacing multiple legacy identity systems. Second, Cengage, the largest U.S.-based provider of teaching and learning materials for higher education, was a new workforce and customer identity deal in the quarter. Cengage is an industry leader offering more than 30 million monthly active users affordable access to quality learning materials.

Identity is a critical part of Cengage's transformation from a traditional print publisher to a digital company. They chose Okta's customer identity products because our platform can secure and centrally manage every type of user in their ecosystem, including students, professors and administrators. Their IT team chose Okta's workforce identity products, including Single Sign-On, Universal Directory, Lifecycle Management and Multi-Factor Authentication to help modernize and automate the employee provisioning process and secure their corporate data. Third, Tyson Foods, a Fortune 100 company, was a noteworthy upsell in the quarter.

Tyson initially selected Okta as the identity provider for its online partner portal to improve the authentication experience for its active network of over 10,000 partners and the company's team members. Most recently, Tyson expanded its deployment to include its 30,000 knowledge workers and 100,000 hourly workers. The company is transforming its business to better enable its employees with the tools they need to be successful. Recently, Tyson launched its Upward Academy Program which provides digital learning for its in-plant workforce.

Okta ensures users are able to access these resources easily and securely while reducing cost for Tyson. We hear more and more that every company is becoming a technology company. Whether in the diverse set of tools they use to empower their workforce or in the applications that they build to engage their customers, an organization's capacity for technology today is directly correlated to its success. It's our responsibility to maximize this capacity for our customers.

As we think about the best way to continue capitalizing on the broader market trends I mentioned earlier, we've identified a number of strategic priorities that we are focused on in the year ahead. Today, I'd like to discuss a few of these in more depth. Specifically, the world's largest organizations, the network effect of our platform, customer identity and security. First, we've talked a lot about the momentum we've had with our enterprise customers this year and you are seeing this materialize in our results.

But below the surface, we are approaching a tipping point with the largest organizations in the world, recognizing the need for secure and scalable identity solutions that connect to both their cloud applications and on-premise infrastructure. These organizations are acknowledging the critical role that the cloud will play in their environments. But this transition is understandably one that will unfold over many years. And despite the inherent complexity in their IT environments, they need to deliver a seamless experience to their users and ensure that the right people are able to access the right technologies at the right time.

This is why identity has become so important. Identity and access management is not new to these organizations but our customers recognize that legacy identity solutions weren't built for heterogeneous hybrid environments. They were built as part of a single vendor software stack which runs in direct conflict to organizations' need to use a broad and diverse range of technologies. This isn't a choice, it's a necessity.

And it calls for identity to be delivered on its own independent and neutral platform that can preserve an organization's ability to choose the applications and infrastructure that make the most sense for them. The Okta Identity Cloud is this platform. Customers choose Okta because we operate seamless and secure connection to the cloud. We connect to every technology our customers want to use, and we enable them to retire legacy identity solutions and can save them millions of dollars over time.

Our second strategic priority is strengthening the powerful network effects that are inherent in our platform. The foundation of this effect is the Okta Integration Network. With over 6,000 prebuilt integrations and our extensive technology partnerships, we believe we are better suited than anyone to securely connect an organization's users to the right technologies. And it's not just about the breadth of our integrations, it's also about how deeply we integrate.

We don't just provide access or provisioning through our integrations. In a number of scenarios, we make many of those applications function better and more securely by enabling and automating workflows between them. We see these drivers of our network effects as key differentiators for us, and we plan to continue investing in our platform and partnerships to further strengthen them going forward. It's in that spirit today I'm excited to announce our proposed acquisition of a company called Azuqua.

We signed an agreement to acquire them that is subject to certain closing conditions. We expect the transaction to close in Q1. Azuqua is a no-code, cloud-based integration platform that automates workflows between apps and services. As Okta's customers modernize their architectures and adopt new technologies, they are demanding more automation to manage and secure it at scale.

With the integration of Azuqua's technology into our platform, we plan to rapidly deliver more advanced use cases by connecting more apps and supporting more complex workflows. We are excited by how this acquisition can accelerate our innovation and enable deeper value for our customers. We are thrilled to welcome the Azuqua team to the Okta family. The third strategic priority I'd like to touch on is customer identity.

We believe that Okta is the only independent and neutral-identity platform. It is extensible, flexible and very easy for our customers and technology partners to connect to and build on. Because of this, everything we do to help an organization manage and secure its workforce can be leveraged to do the same for an organization's customers. We help companies like MLB, Albertsons and JetBlue secure their customer-facing applications and protect the identities of their millions of customers.

Our platform offers a very compelling alternative to them building identity themselves. We can deliver these same capabilities at massive scale more securely. And as they implement Okta as the identity layer to power their applications, they can conserve their scarce developer resources and get to market with their applications faster. As many of our customers use Okta for workforce identity as well, we believe we can uniquely serve as a single identity standard for them to manage and secure every type of user in their ecosystem.

Lastly, I'd like to address one final strategic priority for the year, security. The architecture for security is shifting from network-centric to identity-centric as the firewall can no longer protect the nucleus of the enterprise. The Okta Identity Cloud lays the foundation for a Zero Trust security framework which includes advanced capabilities like contextual access management and continuous authentication. We've made a number of investments in this area already, including our acquisition of ScaleFT, and we look forward to expanding these capabilities across our entire portfolio.

We are in a unique position to make Zero Trust a reality because of the detailed contextual data we gather around the user and the visibility we have into the threats that companies are facing. Stay tuned for more announcements in this area. Before I wrap up, one of my personal highlights was that Okta celebrated its 10-year anniversary in February. When we started the company, our bet on the cloud was far from a sure thing.

And while it's still relatively early, today, the movement to the cloud is inevitable. And it has now created huge opportunities in digital transformation and security that we're all so well-positioned to capture. I'm very proud of the role that Okta is playing and want to thank our employees, our partners and our customers who place their trust in us every day. As we begin fiscal 2020, we have momentum on our side.

I'm looking forward to seeing many of you next month at Oktane, our annual customer conference, where we will share a number of new announcements and more detailed plans for FY '20 and beyond. Thanks again for your time. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill to walk through our financial results. Bill?

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Todd, and thanks again to everyone for joining us. I'll first go through our results for the fourth-quarter and fiscal-year 2019 before discussing our outlook. We finished a successful year with strong fourth-quarter revenue totaling $115.5 million, growing 50% year over year. Subscription revenue totaled $108.5 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 53% year over year, representing 94% of our total revenue, up from 92% in Q4 last year.

Revenue from outside of the U.S. grew 47% year over year and represented approximately 15% of our fourth-quarter revenue, consistent with Q4 last year. We continue to view our international business as a long-term growth driver, and we are investing to expand our international footprint. Moving on to billings.

Both current calculated billings and calculated billings growth for the quarter increased 52% over Q4 last year. We are pleased with calculated billings growth in our seasonally strongest quarter. Strength in billings continued to be driven by both new and existing customers across enterprise and commercial. Also while still in the early stages, we continued to see increased traction with our partner channel in the quarter with a significant year-over-year increase in the percentage of partner-sourced deals.

The total number of customers at the end of the quarter was over 6,100, up 40% year over year and a record 500 net new customer adds in the quarter. We made broad additions across our enterprise customer base, with customers with annual recurring revenue greater than $100,000 growing 50% year over year to 1,038, up 101 from the previous quarter. I would also note that a majority of these large customer additions came from new logos, demonstrating our increased traction landing deals in the large enterprise market. Our strong results were also driven by the continued success we are having in our existing customer base as our dollar-based retention rate for the trailing 12 months ended Q4 remained strong at 120%.

Before turning to expense items and profitability, I would like to point out that I will be discussing non-GAAP results going forward. Our GAAP financial results, along with a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP results, can be found in our earnings release, as well as the supplemental materials posted on our investor relations website. Subscription gross margin continues to be strong at 82.4%, up 160 basis points versus the fourth quarter last year. Total gross margin was 76.4% in the fourth quarter, up 250 basis points year over year.

Gross profit was $88.2 million, up 55% year over year. Turning now to operating expenses. Sales and marketing expense for Q4 was $55.5 million, compared to $40.3 million in Q4 last year. This represents 48% of total revenue, an improvement from 52% in the fourth quarter last year and flat to Q3 as we continued to invest in capturing more of our large addressable market, winning more of the world's largest organizations and expanding geographically.

R&D expense in Q4 was $23.2 million, compared to $14.2 million in Q4 last year. R&D as a percentage of revenue increased to 20% from 18% in Q4 last year as we continued to invest in the Okta Identity Cloud platform and the Okta Integration Network. G&A expense was $14.5 million for the fourth quarter, compared to $11.6 million in the fourth quarter last year. G&A was 13% of revenue, an improvement from 15% for Q4 last year.

Our total headcount was 1,561 as of January 31, 2019, growing 33% over Q4 of last year as we continued to accelerate our headcount growth across the board to support our rapidly growing business. We have continued to see operating leverage in our model as we scale for durable growth and begin to capitalize on the investments we're making. Operating loss in the fourth quarter was $4.9 million, a margin of negative 4.3%, compared to negative 11.9% in the same period last year, a significant 760 basis point improvement. Net loss per share in Q4 was $0.04 with 110 million basic shares outstanding.

This compares to a net loss per share in Q4 last year of $0.08 with 101 million basic shares outstanding. Operating cash flow was $10.1 million in Q4. Operating cash flow margin was a positive 8.8%, compared to a positive 0.2% in Q4 last year, an 860 basis point improvement. Free cash flow was $4.8 million, positive for the second quarter in a row.

Free cash flow margin was 4.1%, an improvement of 690 basis points, compared to a negative 2.8% for Q4 last year. Our top-line outperformance, margin improvement and strong cash collections drove our solid cash flow performance. While we are encouraged by the performance in the quarter, we expect to see continued variability in cash flow margins due to ongoing fluctuations in working capital, the growth in our enterprise business and seasonal factors. Turning to the balance sheet.

We ended the fourth quarter with $564 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. This includes the net proceeds of $307 million from the convertible senior notes we issued in Q1. Quickly touching on financial highlights for the full fiscal year. A momentum that Todd discussed today, which is being driven by organizations moving to the cloud, improving the digital experience for their customers and strengthening their security posture combined with our strong execution today contributed to our outperformance across the board this past year.

Revenue totaled $399 million, an increase of 56% over full fiscal year 2018. Subscription revenue and calculated billings increased 57% and 55% year over year, respectively. At the same time, we demonstrated significant leverage in our operating model. Gross margin was 75%, up from 72% in fiscal 2018.

Operating loss margin improved to 10% of revenue from 24% of revenue last year. And finally, free cash flow was a negative $7 million or 2% of revenue, improving meaningfully from a negative $37 million or 15% of revenue in fiscal 2018. As Todd mentioned, we announced today that we have signed an agreement to acquire Azuqua for a total cash consideration of approximately $52.5 million which we expect will close in Q1 subject to certain closing conditions. I want to highlight that given the timing of the expected close, our guidance includes the anticipated impact for Q1 and the fiscal year.

In particular, we are forecasting minimal revenue impact and an approximately 200 basis point impact to operating margin in both Q1 and for the full year. We are looking forward to welcoming the Azuqua team to Okta and the long-term opportunity we expect this acquisition will bring to our platform and the acceleration of our Okta Integration Network. I would also like to remind everyone for your models that Q1 each year experiences operating margin seasonality due to the reset of payroll taxes and our annual worldwide sales kickoff. Also note that this year, Oktane has moved to Q1 from Q2 last year.

Moving on to guidance. For the first quarter of fiscal 2020, we expect total revenue of 116 to $117 million, representing a growth rate of 39% to 40% year over year. Non-GAAP operating loss of 26.5% to $25.5 million. Non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.22 to $0.21, assuming shares outstanding of approximately 112 million.

For the full-year fiscal 2020, we expect total revenue of $530 to $535 million, representing a growth rate of $33 to 34% year over year. Non-GAAP operating loss of $69 to $63 million. Non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.53 to $0.48, assuming shares outstanding of approximately 115 million. At our analyst day last October, we shared our five-year targets for strong, sustainable top-line growth and profitability.

Since that time, our conviction has only strengthened in Okta's growth opportunity. And I believe we are clearly on track to achieve these targets while investing in the strategic priorities Todd outlined today. In summary, we had a strong quarter and a great fiscal year. As you know, Okta recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary.

Okta has come a long way in the last decade, and we are particularly pleased with the growth we demonstrated in the last two years as a public company. A key reason for our success is that we made the right investments early enough to be one of the first to capitalize in the secular tailwinds of cloud, digital transformation and security. We are now approaching a tipping point with the world's largest organizations as they realize their need for a secure and scalable identity solution that legacy systems just can't fulfill. In order to capitalize on this shift, we are continuing to make the right investments.

We believe we are still in the early stages of our opportunity and plan to invest to drive further growth, both by adding customer-facing headcount and by continuing to innovate our platform with particular focus on enhancing our network effects and expanding security. I look forward to seeing many of you next month at Oktane. With that, Todd, Frederic and I will take your questions. Operator? 

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] And we'll take our first question today from Sterling Auty with JP Morgan.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Yeah, thanks. Hi, guys. So even if I back out the 2% hit to margins from the acquisition, I think the stock is reacting in after hours to a read that it looks like the margin guide is worse than what the Street had anticipated. The margin guides better but it's modestly better.

So I think some of the read that's happening is, geez, is it taking an extra level of investment to drive the same type of growth that the Street was already expecting, maybe things are getting a little bit tougher? If you could just kind of respond or give us your takes on that that would be helpful.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Sterling, that's an interesting question. When I look at the world, I think that the opportunities are even getting bigger. And it's even more exciting. And the trends that we talked about in the past, cloud, more organizations going through their own digital transformation and organizations also having to rethink how they do their security architecture in a more identity-centric way, the trends are just getting bigger.

And we're super excited and we have our strategic plan that we're marching on and we're super excited about the opportunity and the growth prospects and how we can do that in a measured way that's long-term profitable as well.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

All right. Can I have one follow-up? I'm sorry, go ahead.

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

No, I would just say -- this is Bill. I would add to that, Sterling, that these investments that we're making are consistent with that five-year model we presented at Investor Day. And we still feel like we're clearly on target to hit those operating margins of 16 to 19% by fiscal year '24. So this really is us seeing a tremendous market opportunity.

We've always benefited from making investments in a timely manner. That's benefited us in the past and we believe that's what's going to happen in the future.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Got you. And then one follow-up. Just you gave the description of Azuqua. But can you give maybe a real-world example how the technologies will work together? Because obviously I think it does expand your addressable market.

But just a real-world example would be helpful.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Happy to do that. Yes, we're super, super, super excited about the Azuqua team joining Okta. And Azuqua is -- the business they were in, was basically integration platform as a service. So it's a no-code cloud-based integration platform that would help their customers automate data integration and workflows between different applications.

So what we're -- this is a technology acquisition for us. They did have many successful customers. The revenue from those customers is immaterial for our results. So this is really -- the way you should think about this is a technology acquisition.

And we're going to take this amazing technology that allows you to customize and extend any business process and we're going to focus it on our Lifecycle Management market opportunity. So as you know, our Lifecycle Management product is a very significant product for Okta and it's already the leading product in the market. It's fully cloud based, it comes pre-integrated to many, many applications in a very deep and expansive way. And the Azuqua technology is -- you can think about it as taking that breadth and depth of integration to a whole new level.

Because you'll be able to talk to any system, any identity attribute in those systems and fully control with very little code with that high degree of expressibility the business process and the workflow that you want to automate. So a very concrete real-world example for you is let's say you're a global company that has several disparate HR systems and several hundreds of applications on the back end. As you know, from our businesses at work report we released a month or so ago, that our largest customers have, on average, hundreds of applications, right? And imagine you're this large company trying to integrate the back ends of all these services in terms of the identities and you have different HR processes and different subsidiary companies and different back end directories that those newly hired employees need to be copied to. Azuqua and that technology can -- lets you basically express any type of workflow between those systems that your company or your industry requires.

So that's why it's really going to take the Lifecycle Management product and really supercharge that and really help us capture that big opportunity.

Sterling Auty -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for the question.

Operator

Next, we'll hear from Alex Henderson with Needham.

Alex Henderson -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

So it seems pretty clear to me that you guys are really hitting an inflection point in terms of reaching a critical scale to pull away from the competition and become the de facto standard in the space. Could you talk a little bit about what you're seeing relative to the competitive dynamics with other players? What your win rates look like? A little bit about whether you're seeing less competition or more competition? And then second follow-up question would be, if you could just give us a little bit more granularity on what accelerated investments you're planning on the international side?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

It's super interesting. If you look at the business overall, the main thing that's kind of changed in the last, I would say, 18 months is that we're in more deals. So there are basically more deals happening and are happening faster. These are identity selections and it's a big -- it's a strategic investment for these companies.

You're talking about how they're going to accelerate their journey to the cloud, how they're going to take advantage of digital transformation and be secure. So they're important decisions they make. So they look at the different players. And that's been consistent, whether it's a legacy vendor versus a newer vendor or it's a platform vendor versus what we are which is independent and neutral platform.

So they look at all the players and that hasn't changed. And our win rates are very consistent, like consistently what they have been. So that's great. The difference I would say is that there's more deals and they happen faster.

And I think there's a lot of underlying dynamics that are driving this. But one of the most significant dynamics is that with our success in our customer base, when you see the customer examples we talk about, like this time, it was Tyson Foods or the Fortune 10 healthcare company we talked about, these big successful stories, basically the word is out in the buyer community that Okta can help you be successful quickly. It's a broad platform that can help you with everything from cloud adoption to digital transformation to security. And these people are smart.

They talk to their peers, they go to a new job, they talk to people at their old jobs and that our reputation for success I think is a really accelerating thing. So it's a pretty fortunate position we've been in. We've worked hard to build up this reputation. I think now we're reaping the benefits of it.

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

And Alex, what I would add -- this is Frederic, what I would add to that is if you look at why we win a lot of new customers and you see the growth in not only the customer base but the number of customers paying us over $100,000 a year, what you really see is that focus on customer success that we talk about, which I don't think is natural in enterprise IT generically and specifically in the history of enterprise identity. Vendors have not done a terrific job of making customers successful. And I think you see that changing and specifically in our customer base and then in the prospect base. For example, we put out two press releases just this morning about successful deployment at both Hitachi and Brink's.

And if you think about, if you're a CSO of a Fortune 500 company and you're thinking about what solutions you're going to go with, not just to buy technology but to be successful with these deployments, you look to some of these examples. I mean, the CIO -- the global CIO of Hitachi in a press release talks about the successful deployment to 300,000 employees around the world. And how quickly he got the technology up and running and found that true value in the solution he was buying and the company, Okta, he was partnering with. And I think you're starting to see more and more of that as we're getting to that inflection point, as you said a tipping point, as we're starting to get penetration into the world's largest organizations.

These folks are looking for partners that they can work with to really be successful and I think they're finding that in our company which we're very fortunate with.

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

And then I think, to your question as it relates to international, I think to think about this is that the investments we're making in innovation that we talked about. So the investments we're making in the innovative areas that Todd was focused on, enhancing our platform, our network effects, enhancing our security, are all going to benefit us worldwide from the standpoint that it's one platform, and those impacts will benefit us both U.S. and international. So that -- those investments will benefit international.

I think specific to international, to your question, we are investing in go to market. We are investing in more customer-facing headcount. We are investing in the partner channel and we're starting to see a lot of traction with the partner channel internationally. When I talked earlier about the fact that we're seeing more sourced deals coming from the partners, a lot of that was international.

When I was talking about the fact that the partner channel were getting that traction. A lot of it is from the implementation of partner -- or partners doing implementations for our customers. So those are all the areas that we're focused on investing internationally.

Alex Henderson -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Great. We certainly buy in to your new success. Thanks.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much. Nice to hear from you.

Operator

Next, we'll hear from Rob Owens with KeyBanc Capital Markets. OK, we're not getting a response from that line. We'll move to Heather Bellini with Goldman Sachs.

Heather Bellini -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Great. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello can you hear me?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Loud and clear. We can hear you.

Heather Bellini -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Oh,perfect. Sorry about that. So two questions. First, security is a platform and the notion of Zero Trust has been something that CIOs have wanted for many years but haven't been able to achieve.

I guess, Todd, what's giving customers the confidence that they can finally achieve that goal? And is there a way for them to think about getting rid of some of their legacy technology as the notion of what you need to secure changes as you were talking about in your opening comments? And then I have one follow-up.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

I think that the whole Zero Trust is a good example of you were to look at the opportunity for Okta several years ago, you wouldn't have necessarily seen it be as broad as it's become in the whole security area. So talking about what that means in detail there, I think it's helpful to understand why we're so bullish about the market opportunity and why commensurately we're really investing to make sure we can capture it. So it's a good case study. So if you think about Zero Trust, the concept is -- essentially, Zero Trust, the term means don't trust your network, right? The old world was like you have the network perimeter and you put all your security rules and your firewall and you had a VPN outside of that and everything outside was not secure and everything inside was insecure.

To this, where you don't -- move into a Zero Trust world is where you don't trust that perimeter. And what it means is that you have to do security all the way down to the individual level. So you have to have a system that can make sure it can identify the person, the device, the source of the access, the access patterns, what past access patterns have looked like and how they measure with what the person is trying to do now and to make a real-time high fidelity security decision that both has good user experience, it doesn't block the wrong things and also keeps you from doing bad things. So that's the idea.

And you mentioned like they've tried to do this forever and why it hasn't happened. I would say two things. One is that with the move to cloud, reaching the, really, the tipping point where it is now and people forget. So the global IT market is $1 trillion.

But cloud is only 20% of that. It's only about $200 billion if you add up all the infrastructure as a service, all the SaaS apps, all that stuff. It's still only 20%. So we're basically at a tipping point where companies have so much cloud now that they really have no choice.

They can't trust the perimeter because 20% of things aren't in their perimeter. So it's like a requirement thing, it gets to a tipping point, you have to manage this. And the second thing is there are -- there have been demonstrated better ways. I mean, people have seen that if you get a good identity system like Okta, you have a system of record.

You have a nice pivot point to build that around. So you have a good system of record, that identities are integrated together, you can make a policy decision based on what people are doing, and it's possible. So I think the combination of the problem reaching kind of a fever pitch and then solutions, identity-centric solutions like Okta, I am obviously biased, I think we have the best one, delivering that solution, that's what's seeing it really tip.

Heather Bellini -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Great. And then just one quick follow-up based on everything you said which we agree with, are your initial lands getting larger?

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Heather, they are. So if you look at the deals that we did last quarter -- actually, last couple of quarters and you look at the metric where we show those customers paying us more than $100,000 a year, you'll see that those numbers have grown pretty significantly, 50% this past quarter. But what's also happening is within those numbers, most of that growth or most of that additions are net new logos. So we're getting bigger deal sizes initially coming in.

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

And I think just adding to that, Heather, I think what's really exciting is you see this happening not only across verticals but across geographies. And now the platform is becoming very, very rich. So all the different products that we can help our customers with, not only in workforce identity but also in customer identity and access management means there's a lot of different landing points. So we talk about -- you heard in the prepared remarks about that Fortune 10 company.

They landed with Workforce and then they found ways to augment what they were doing with Customer Identity and Access Management. You heard about Cengage which was the other way. They were looking to solve a Customer Identity and Access Management problem and then at the same time realize the opportunity to augment what they were doing on the workforce side. And then finally, Tyson, you see that they upsold themselves from a workforce to include everything they're doing with partners.

And I think these are just very good examples of a couple of things. First of all, we are seeing larger and larger lands. We are, No. 2, able to do that with a number of different ways, different products, different use cases.

And then No. 3, I would just echo what Todd said, it is very early. I mean, we are just getting started with the world's largest organizations. And we're going to invest to that in the quarters and the years ahead because the opportunity to help these companies really transform how they think about cloud, how they think about the interactions with their customers as every company has to become a technology company and the underpinnings of security.

these are huge opportunities and ones that we're very, very excited about. And again, the results are good and we're very fortunate and we're happy with those results. But I think the times ahead are going to be very, very exciting for the business and for our customers.

Heather Bellini -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Thank you so much.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Heather .

Operator

Next, we'll hear from Lisa Franchi with Morgan Stanley.

Lisa Franchi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Todd, thanks for the color on the Azuqua acquisition. I know you said you're going to integrate it into the Lifecycle Management products.

I'm wondering if you could just maybe talk a little bit more about how you plan on monetizing it? Is it going to be a stand-alone solution or is it just something that will enhance the Lifecycle Management products?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

So it's a great question. I think that it will definitely be something that enhances the Lifecycle Management products. And there's a possibility that we haven't made the decision yet, but there's a possibility over time as we get integrated and customers see the benefit of it, that we'll actually break it out as a separate product, independent of Lifecycle Management. But the basic execution is Enhanced Lifecycle Management and make what's really an industry-leading product even more valuable for customers.

And we'll be able to drive more penetration to the customer base, help us land new customers and really keep that strategic advantage going there.

Lisa Franchi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

OK. Thanks. And just a follow-up for Bill on the conversation on the operating margin guidance. So we have your guide for FY '20 and then we have your guide for FY '24 which you're still on track for.

But how should investors think about how margins will trend beyond FY '20 through FY '24? Is it more back end loaded in terms of leverage? Or do we think sort of like a study trend of leverage beyond FY '20 through FY '24?

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

I think the way to think about it, Melissa, is that we see the market opportunities here, especially as we talk about the worldwide -- or the world's largest organizations, it's early. So we think that there's a big opportunity. It's early. We're making investments to realize that.

So I think that I wouldn't say that the operating margin is going to be back ended. But I also wouldn't say that it's going to be linear between now and then. So I would think about it more in that terms. I think that we will start to -- we have historically seen leverage in our model.

We demonstrated that last year with the significant improvement we made in operating margin, our non-GAAP operating margin and free cash flow. We have that inherent in our model. So you're going to see that margin improvement. You're going to see that leverage coming through.

But I wouldn't say it's going to be linear between now and then.

Lisa Franchi -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Makes sense. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question will come from Rishi Jaluria with D. A. Davidson.

Hannah Rudoff -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

Hi, guys. This is Hannah Rudoff on for Rishi.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

You're coming through pretty faintly. Maybe turn your volume up, or...

Hannah Rudoff -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

Yeah. Can you hear me now?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

That's better. That's better. Thank you.

Hannah Rudoff -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

OK. Just first question on the three tailwinds you were talking about, cloud, digital transformation and security. I was wondering abroad if you were seeing these as pervasive as you're seeing them domestically? Or if you're seeing them at a different pace than they are domestically?

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the question. I think these are global trends. I mean, people move into cloud, people thinking about how they can better interact with their customers and partners and obviously, the security threats and opportunities out there, these are global trends.

They're happening everywhere. In terms of pace, I think you do see that North America is a little bit of ahead in terms of adoption of cloud, adoption of some of these modern technologies. But Europe and Asia-Pacific are picking up quickly. We see that in our business.

We see that in the customer base. And it's not just small and medium businesses. The world's largest organizations are international. If you look at traditionally very successful customers of ours like ENGIE, one of the largest energy companies in the world based in France and the success they're having with modern technology is right there.

So as an overall trend, I think there might be a little bit of lag from North America to the rest of the world. But it's not significant. And again, everyone is going to be taking advantage of these opportunities. It's just much better technology, much better solutions for the customer, the cost is lower, the chance of success is higher and the return that they get on those investments are much quicker.

So there's a lot of reasons you're going to continue to see that. But again, it's not -- we talk largely about the private sector on this call but as you know, the public sector is the same. The federal, state and local governments not only in North America but internationally have been great businesses for us. It's early but there's a lot of opportunity and we're very excited about that.

Hannah Rudoff -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

Great, that's really helpful. And then second, it's nice to see such large growth in your enterprise customer, and I was wondering if you could talk about how the go to market strategy is different on that side?

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Yes, absolutely. I mean, we have historically have done a good job of not only accelerating in the commercial segments, so small and medium business and in enterprise. But I think what's really changing now is you're starting to get this tipping point we're talking about where as large organizations are understanding that there is a lot of value for them, we are investing across the board in all of our go to market. But in particular, in enterprise and in named accounts, we are hiring more account executives, more sales engineering, more support and those dividends are going to pay off very quickly.

I think we're also benefiting from the fact that a lot of our senior sales executives have seen a lot of success in the last quarters and years, and they start talking to their friends from past jobs. And frankly, we're starting to see more and more of the best talent we've ever seen on the go to market side be attracted to what we're doing. And as we grow, I think we're going to continue to up level the quality of the team which I'm thrilled about. We just had our worldwide sales kick off a couple of weeks ago for the team and it was very, very exciting.

The momentum was palpable. We had more than 50 partners who paid to attend the event and to meet our sellers and make sure they were building those relationships. And I think you're just going to continue to see that acceleration. I'm very excited about it and I'm very bullish on it.

Hannah Rudoff -- D.A. Davidson -- Analyst

That's good to hear. Thank you.

Operator

Terry Tillman with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey has our next question.

Terry Tillman -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

Hey, Todd, Frederic and Bill, nice job on the quarter. By the way, can you hear me?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Terry, thanks for joining us.

Terry Tillman -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

Great, awesome. Yes. So I love the businesses at work report, waited with bated breath to read that. So it's great read.

I noticed hybrid IT mentioned in there and you had some visuals and some data points around hybrid IT. Todd, I've heard you today, talk about hybrid IT earlier in your prepared remarks. What I'm curious about is in new business that's coming your way, how much of it now has use cases that are hybrid IT focus in terms of securing hybrid IT as opposed to just it's a cloud -- straight up cloud deal for just securing cloud apps? And then I have a follow-up?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

100% have hybrid. And it's just the degree to how much hybrid. But -- so especially in the world's largest organizations, hybrid is more important. So that's why over the past few years, we've invested so heavily in making sure the Okta Identity Cloud is integrated to everything, not just SaaS apps but SaaS apps and VPNs and network security systems and ever different kind of device and every different kind of development platform.

Because the one thing about the world's largest organizations, when they want to do digital transformation or be secure or move to the cloud, they want to do it in the way that they can be comprehensive and cover their whole enterprise and not just one part of it. So that's why our whole integration strategy is so critical. And even if you look at Azuqua, right, one of the things, as I've talked about Azuqua on this call, I haven't mentioned it, which is actually very important. It's also -- when you think about integrating Okta to various different systems and the depth and the way you can model those integrations, Azuqua enables us to do that at a much deeper and more comprehensive level.

It means that this benefit of being integrated to everything more deeply accrues to the customers even more. So it's about connecting everything. It's about letting them do what they need to do, whether it's on-premise or in the cloud and it's kind of showing up on our results. We're very excited about it.

Terry Tillman -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

Great. And Bill, maybe just on free cash flow. I'm not necessarily asking for pinpoint free cash flow guidance, but if you want to give that that would be fine too. But I'm just kind of curious to see, I assume that will look a lot better than the operating losses just because of the billings progression but can you talk at all about how to think about free cash flow for FY '20?

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Terry. We expect to be free cash flow positive for this fiscal year for fiscal year '20, slightly better than breakeven. So we will be -- we do plan to be free cash flow positive for the year. There may be some variability in the quarters.

there typically is as we've talked about before because of working capital fluctuations and also because we do have seasonality in our billings. The billings collections have some seasonality to it. So there may be quarter-to-quarter impacts. But our expectation right -- our expectation is to be free cash flow positive this year.

Terry Tillman -- SunTrust Robinson Humphrey -- Analyst

All right, thanks. Nice job.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Nowinski with Piper Jaffray.

Andrew Nowinski -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst

Great. Thank you and congrats on a nice quarter. So I want to go back to one of the comments that Bill made in the script about partner-sourced deals contributing nicely. Maybe if you can just elaborate on the traction you're seeing within your partner network and perhaps rank order how we should think about the ones that will have the largest contribution in fiscal '20?

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Yes, absolutely. I'll take that. Thanks, Andrew, for the question. I think just to start with, we're very excited about everything we have going on with the partners.

So partners mean different things for different companies and different people and their uses global. So just to kind of level set again for everyone, the way we think about partners is first of all, there is a large group of system integrators starting with the global system integrators, organizations like Deloitte, Accenture, PwC that are starting to really standardize not only their identity and security practices but also their digital transformation practices around Okta and they were some of the biggest sponsors of our sales kickoff a few weeks ago. Secondly, we think about a lot of these technology partners that we have, whether they're other Software-as-a-Service or technology infrastructure partners, organizations like Palo Alto Networks or some of these larger broader strategic partnerships we have with organizations like VMware where they start to provide a lot of value in terms of not only introductions into new accounts but also in that joint solutioning where you can really provide value to the customer. I was in November in France and Paris for our office opening there and the European head of VMware was very excited about all the large opportunities that we can get into together, where they're looking for this best of breed joint solution for identity and mobility.

And I think it's really just a testament to the fact that these are worldwide standards that are going on. And then finally, the last thing I would point to is you're starting to see more and more partners that are integrating around the Okta service. So whether it's companies that are already out there, that are gaining traction like Shape Security and BetterCloud that are looking to integrate with Okta or brand new organizations that are very early on their lifecycle who are actually building the Okta Identity Cloud right into the middle of their solutions. I mean, these are huge opportunities for us and as we continue to invest in the platform, you're going to see more and more of that.

Specifically about this last quarter, in Bill's prepared comments, I mean, I think it plays to all of those pieces. But in particular, as more and more organizations and system integrators are looking to build practices, they're also bringing us in to organizations. And as you know, the world's largest organizations, any Fortune 500, Global 2000 has relationships with one if not all of the GSIs. And I think we're really just starting to see the inflection and tipping point there.

And I think that in the times ahead, we're going to see continued momentum there and that's really going to provide for a durable and long-term growth in those large organizations. And finally, when you think about the international expansion, we just can't be everywhere ourselves and when there's so many different countries in Europe and Asia-Pacific with their own cultural standards, having strong partner networks to really help us not only expand into those countries but make those companies successful because we're very, very good at that and very focused on that customer's success, that's part and parcel of what we do. So sorry, kind of a long-winded answer but there's a lot of complexity there. We want to make that as clear and simple for folks as possible.

Andrew Nowinski -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst

That's great. And then maybe just a quick one for Bill. Looks like DSOs increased significantly in the quarter. Just wondering if that was simply due to linearity or if there are any large deals that might have perhaps pulled into the January quarter?

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

No, we actually had a very strong cash collection in the quarter. What you're looking at is really that a lot of the billings came at the tail end of the quarter. So it's really the linearity at the tail end of the quarter which is driving that.

Andrew Nowinski -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much, guys.

Operator

Our next question comes from Taz Koujalgi with Guggenheim Partners.

Taz Koujalgi -- Guggenheim Partners -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions. First one, if I look at your services revenue, they usually go up quite a bit from Q3 to Q4.

They went down sequentially in this quarter. Any comment on what drove that?

Bill Losch -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, I think what you're looking at is a continuing trend and traction that we're seeing with our implementation partners of doing the services which we think is a very positive thing. We especially saw it internationally. And actually, we're seeing tracking internationally with our services partners, faster in the lifecycle than we heard -- saw U.S. when U.S.

was the same size. So it's a positive development for us and something we've been working toward as far as investing in the partner channel and working with our partner implementation or our implementation partners to do more of those services for us.

Taz Koujalgi -- Guggenheim Partners -- Analyst

Got it. And then second is just the question about the deals getting -- the initial deals getting larger. Can you clarify if that's a function of your initial customers being bigger now versus prior or is it a function of customers buying more products upfront?

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Yes, thanks for the question. I think it's a combination of both of those things. Certainly, larger organizations just have much larger challenges, opportunities and budgets that they can tap into as they do that. That's certainly the case.

But you have to remember in a Software-as-a-Service model like ours, we're releasing software dozens and dozens of times a year, 40 releases a year means there's a lot of new software coming out, more features, more functions which means more use cases that we can help customers solve. So there are really more and more complex environments that we can integrate with and even mid-market or small businesses find more and more ways we can help them. So it's a combination of the 2, bigger companies coming our way and companies of all sizes finding more ways they can use the Okta Identity Cloud off the bat.

Taz Koujalgi -- Guggenheim Partners -- Analyst

That's helpful. And just one last one, if I could. How do you think about the upsell or the retention rate going forward now that you're landing with bigger deals initially?

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

Well, I think I would point to the dollar-based net retention rate which you've seen is consistent with Q3 at 120%. So you're really seeing that customers are landing on one side with bigger and bigger deals but also expanding across both more use cases and more products. And I think that's a trend that we expect to continue to see as the company grows and then the opportunity expands.

Taz Koujalgi -- Guggenheim Partners -- Analyst

Thanks, guys. Very helpful.

Operator

We'll now hear from Rob Owens with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Mike Casado -- Keybanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

Hey, guys. This is Mike Casado on for Rob Owens. My apologies for the user error on the first go around. I want to double-click on the last question that was asked relative to the larger initial deals and the broadening opportunity.

With the strength you saw this quarter, how did the internal versus external business perform relative to your initial expectations?

Frederic Kerrest -- Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

I think it's consistent. I mean, I think you'll continue to see very strong growth across the board, across the entire business but also across the two large sets of use cases that you talked about. Workforce, traditional enterprise identity management workforce employees and customers and contractors continue to do very, very well, very strong business but as this customer identity and access management, obviously, those are paired very closely to more and more cloud in the environment and obviously digital transformation. And as every company has to become a software company and a technology company, every company has got to provide much better interfaces for their customers, their partners, their vendors, their suppliers, you're going to continue to see more and more opportunities in customer identity management which traditionally has been a build your own.

So different dynamics in those two markets but I think that they're both doing very, very well and continue to grow which we're very excited about.

Mike Casado -- Keybanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. And then circling back to the Azuqua acquisition. Todd, you previously talked about the prebuilt integrations as really being the key source of competitive differentiation versus Microsoft. In the past you've also drawn a line in the sand just in terms of being two to three years today ahead of that competition.

How far ahead are you guys now and how did that acquisition change that gap?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

I think it's -- I think the big change is not in the connectors per se or the integrations per se. It's how you can orchestrate those around the business process. So it's one thing to have a very expansive connector into something like Workday, right? So we have, by far, the best connector to Workday in the industry. It supports all the fields.

It supports all the events inside of Workday into a business process. And we're, as you mentioned, multiple years ahead and we've maintained that lead in terms of like the number of connectors and the breadth of those connector, the richness of the data in those connectors. So what Azuqua really brings, it's something different. It's the way you can kind of chain those connectors together, right? So that you could say for example, with a very easy, not a lot of hard detailed development but in a very easy way, you can say, hey, listen, here are the steps that have to happen when a new employee gets hired, get all the data from workflow, do some simple processing on it, create a user over here with this type of data enhanced or do something specific in this other application where you want to copy files around or you want to change group permissions.

So it's like how you chain those connectors together. So it's almost like it's like while the competition is kind of trying to catch up on the connectors, we're changing the game by changing what it means to link those connectors together in a process. I think that's the way -- that's the most helpful way to think about it.

Mike Casado -- Keybanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

I totally understand. That's helpful context, Todd. Thank you. That's it for me.

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Thanks for bringing that up.

Operator

Our last question will come from Jonathan Ho with William Blair.

Jonathan Ho -- William Blair -- Analyst

Hi. Congratulations on a strong quarter. I just wanted to maybe get a quick update first of all on the ScaleFT acquisition and just maybe where we are with that?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

So ScaleFT, for folks that may be new, is a company that we acquired last year and they were -- their product was a product around securing access to servers. So if you have a bunch of servers in your data center or you're infrastructure as a service cloud provider, you use ScaleFT to do the login and the security and the user management for administrators login to those servers. And to do that, you have to be very good at Zero Trust security. So you have to be very good at detecting who the user is, who the -- what the security posture of the user's device.

Because an administrator logging into servers is a sensitive thing. So we're very excited about this acquisition for a couple of reasons. One is that we can take that technology, that Zero Trust technology and broadly apply it across our entire portfolio, from Single Sign-On to Multi-Factor Authentication and the other workforce products and even customer identity products. So that's exciting, just the technology opportunity.

And we are also excited about some new announcements we're going to make around the product category at our Oktane conference coming up in April. So it's a little bit of a stay tuned for that but it's -- we're pretty excited about what we can do there in terms of new products.

Jonathan Ho -- William Blair -- Analyst

Excellent. And then -- and just one last one on Azuqua. What kind of investments do you need to make in the business in order to scale it? And what's sort of the timeframe for us to see Azuqua integrated into the offering?

Todd McKinnon -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

One of the -- we -- so it's interesting. When you think about how this -- what our approach here on this one was. First of all, we -- our main philosophy on R&D is do things organically. So we want to innovate.

We have a very strong track record of innovating, it's one of our core values. You basically created this category