Q4 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The 63 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between January 25th – March 30th. In this post, I’ll take a data-driven approach in evaluating the overall group’s performance, and highlight individual standouts along the way. As a venture capitalist, I naturally cater my analysis through the lens of a private investor. Over my years as a VC, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with hundreds of entrepreneurs who are all building special companies. Through these interactions, I’ve built up mental benchmarks for metrics on which I place extra emphasis. My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., net retention and CAC payback).
i dont understand how a company like datadog who is hitting on all cylinders atm , can have a reduced guidance for 2023 when somelike samsara guidance is increased with with a negative free cash flow margin hmmmm.
"Fewer companies are beating consensus estimates, and the magnitude of the median beat has gone down from ~5% to ~2.5% (first chart). At the same time, forward guides are also weakening."
This is concerning. Seems like there's still runway down. Great post!
Would be nice if you include table like data which can be processed and not a screen shot which is useless for any analysis. Thanks.
Apologies if I got this wrong but for your gross margin CAC Payback formula why are you multiplying by 12 if your S&M and new ARR is quarterly?
For public software companies your formula is using annualized new ARR but using quarterly S&M expense and then multiplying this by 12?
i dont understand how a company like datadog who is hitting on all cylinders atm , can have a reduced guidance for 2023 when somelike samsara guidance is increased with with a negative free cash flow margin hmmmm.
Very informative, looking forward to the next quarter’s analysis!
Great summary of Cloud Software Q4, thanks!
Great post Jamin!
"Fewer companies are beating consensus estimates, and the magnitude of the median beat has gone down from ~5% to ~2.5% (first chart). At the same time, forward guides are also weakening."
This is concerning. Seems like there's still runway down. Great post!