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Alteryx (AYX) has been making a strong move over the past few weeks, so we wanted to provide some color on what has been going on at the company and why the stock has been a mover of late.
Alteryx is a provider of what's known as self-service data analytics software. This is where a company compiles massive amounts of data to look for trends and make business decisions. A problem has been the complexity of creating tools that can analyze the data. Often, IT people are needed to create data analytic queries. AYX has developed an easy-to-use self-serve analytics platform using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that can eliminate the need to write code.
AYX made its IPO debut in March 2017 and has not looked back. The company beat EPS and revenue consensus estimates each quarter. It had a big beat in Q1 and raised guidance nicely for Q2. In fact, AYX reported a surprise profit in Q1 at $0.04 when a loss was expected. AYX should hit a milestone in 2019 as its first year of profitability on a full year basis.
Some key goals for AYX have been to win larger accounts, develop partnerships, and grow internationally. AYX made good progress on these fronts in Q1 with a 50+% increase in $50K annual accounts and nearly a double in $100K accounts. On the strategic partnership front, AYX recently signed a deal with Thomson Reuters, which is building Alteryx into its ONESOURCE platform. International revenue jumped 54% yr/yr to $23 mln in Q1, representing 30% of total revenue.
As to why the stock has been so strong the past couple of weeks or so (+33% since its closing price on June 3), we think a couple of acquisitions in the big data space are fueling the recent move. On June 6, Alphabet (GOOGL) announced it would acquire data analytics startup Looker for $2.6 bln. Then, on June 10, Salesforce.com (CRM) said it will acquire Tableau Software (DATA), which has a data analytics platform.
In sum, big data is a hot space and AYX's platform is very popular. We would not be surprised if AYX got acquired at some point as it would make an attractive fit for a large enterprise software name. Even without the takeover possibility, we have been a fan of AYX for some time and think it has good potential.
