Clouded Judgement 3.7.25 - Economic Growth Slowing?
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date!
Continued Uncertainty
Last week I wrote about the period of max uncertainty we’re in - particularly the political and economic uncertainty (and how they’re related). This week, we saw an economic forecast predict Q1 GDP to shrink nearly 3%. You can see in the graph below just how quickly these economic forecasts have changed. Last week the projection was (1.5%). A month ago it was +3.9%. In just one month, the one economic prediction for Q1 GDP dropped by nearly 8%! That’s a mind blowing drop, but representative of the period of max uncertainty we find ourselves in. Stocks got hammered again this week with the Nasdaq down >5%. In these moments of peak uncertainty, markets like staying on the sideline waiting for more clarity.
Earnings Check In
We’re now past the halfway point of Q4 ‘24 earnings, and so far the results have not been great. Maybe the most telling stat is that companies full year guidance is not coming in much higher than full year consensus estimates (on average). The median full year guide is only 0.1% ahead of full year consensus (chart below). We’ll see how these consensus estimates trend over the year, but the initial guides out of the gate do not inspire confidence that 2025 will be a year of out performance.
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Quarterly Reports Summary
Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples
Top 10 Weekly Share Price Movement
Update on Multiples
SaaS businesses are generally valued on a multiple of their revenue - in most cases the projected revenue for the next 12 months. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. Even a DCF is riddled with long term assumptions. The promise of SaaS is that growth in the early years leads to profits in the mature years. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue.
Overall Stats:
Overall Median: 5.6x
Top 5 Median: 17.2x
10Y: 4.3%
Bucketed by Growth. In the buckets below I consider high growth >27% projected NTM growth (I had to update this, as there’s only 1 company projected to grow >30% after this quarter’s earnings), mid growth 15%-27% and low growth <15%
High Growth Median: 10.2x
Mid Growth Median: 9.0x
Low Growth Median: 4.4x
EV / NTM Rev / NTM Growth
The below chart shows the EV / NTM revenue multiple divided by NTM consensus growth expectations. So a company trading at 20x NTM revenue that is projected to grow 100% would be trading at 0.2x. The goal of this graph is to show how relatively cheap / expensive each stock is relative to their growth expectations
EV / NTM FCF
The line chart shows the median of all companies with a FCF multiple >0x and <100x. I created this subset to show companies where FCF is a relevant valuation metric.
Companies with negative NTM FCF are not listed on the chart
Scatter Plot of EV / NTM Rev Multiple vs NTM Rev Growth
How correlated is growth to valuation multiple?
Operating Metrics
Median NTM growth rate: 11%
Median LTM growth rate: 16%
Median Gross Margin: 76%
Median Operating Margin (5%)
Median FCF Margin: 16%
Median Net Retention: 107%
Median CAC Payback: 45 months
Median S&M % Revenue: 38%
Median R&D % Revenue: 24%
Median G&A % Revenue: 16%
Comps Output
Rule of 40 shows rev growth + FCF margin (both LTM and NTM for growth + margins). FCF calculated as Cash Flow from Operations - Capital Expenditures
GM Adjusted Payback is calculated as: (Previous Q S&M) / (Net New ARR in Q x Gross Margin) x 12 . It shows the number of months it takes for a SaaS business to payback their fully burdened CAC on a gross profit basis. Most public companies don’t report net new ARR, so I’m taking an implied ARR metric (quarterly subscription revenue x 4). Net new ARR is simply the ARR of the current quarter, minus the ARR of the previous quarter. Companies that do not disclose subscription rev have been left out of the analysis and are listed as NA.
Sources used in this post include Bloomberg, Pitchbook and company filings
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