Author: Chong Ser Jing

Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA) is one of the 50-plus companies that’s in my family’s portfolio. I first bought Okta shares for the portfolio in March 2019 at a price of US$79. I’ve not sold any of the shares I’ve bought. 

The purchase has worked out well for my family’s portfolio, with Okta’s share price being around US$128 now. But we’ve only owned the company’s shares for slightly more than a year, and it is always important to think about how the company’s business will evolve going forward. What follows is my thesis for why I still continue to invest in Okta shares.

Company description

Okta’s vision is to enable any organisation to use any technology. To fulfill its vision, Okta provides the Okta Identity Cloud software platform where all its products live. Okta’s cloud-based software products help other companies manage and secure access to applications for their employees, contractors, partners, and customers.

The internal use-cases, where Okta’s solutions are used by organisations to manage and secure software-access among their employees, contractors, and partners, are referred to as workforce identity by Okta. An example of a workforce identity customer is 20th Century Fox. The external-facing use cases are known as customer identity, and it is where Okta’s solutions are used by its customers to manage and secure the identities and service/product access of their customers. Adobe is one of the many customers of Okta’s customer identity platform.

There’s a rough 80:20 split in Okta’s revenue between the workforce identity and customer identity solutions.

At the end of FY2020 (fiscal year ended 31 January 2020), Okta had more than 7,950 customers. These customers come from nearly every industry and range from small organisations with less than 100 employees to the largest companies in the world.

For a geographical perspective, Okta sourced 84% of its revenue in FY2020 from the US. 

Investment thesis

I had previously laid out my six-criteria investment framework in The Good Investors. I will use the same framework to describe my investment thesis for Okta.

1. Revenues that are small in relation to a large and/or growing market, or revenues that are large in a fast-growing market

Okta estimates that its market opportunity for workforce identity is U$30 billion today. This is up from US$18 billion around three years ago. The company arrived at its current workforce identity market size of US$30 billion in this way: “50,000 US businesses with more than 250 employees (per 2019 US.Bureau of Labor Statistics) multiplied by 12-month ARR [annual recurring revenue] assuming adoption of all our current products, which implies a market of [US]$15 billion domestically, then multiplied by two to account for international opportunity.”

For customer identity, Okta estimates the addressable market to be US$25 billion. Here’s Okta’s description of the method behind its estimate: “Based on 4.4 billion combined Facebook users and service employees worldwide multiplied by internal application usage and pricing assumptions.” I am taking Okta’s estimate of its customer identity market with a pinch of salt. But I’m still confident that the opportunity is huge, given the growth and size of the entire SaaS (software-as-a-service) market. A November 2019 forecast from market research firm Gartner sees global SaaS spending growing by 15% annually from US$$86 billion in 2018 to US$151 billion in 2022.

In FY2020, Okta’s revenue was just US$586.1 million, which barely scratches the surface of its total estimated market opportunity of US$55 billion. I also think it’s likely that Okta’s market is poised for growth. Based on Okta’s studies, the average number of apps that companies are using has increased by 52% from 58 in 2015 to 88 in 2019. Earlier this month, Okta’s co-founder and CEO, Todd McKinnon, was interviewed by Ben Thompson for the latter’s excellent tech newsletter, Stratechery. During the interview, McKinnon revealed that large companies (those with over 5,000 employees) typically use thousands of apps.

The high and growing level of app-usage among companies means it can be a massive pain for an organisation to manage software-access for its employees, contractors, partners, and customers. This pain-point is what Okta Identity Cloud is trying to address. By using Okta’s software, an organisation does not need to build custom identity management software –  software developers from the organisation can thus become more productive. The organisation would also be able to scale more efficiently.

2. A strong balance sheet with minimal or a reasonable amount of debt

As of 31 January 2020, Okta held US$1.4 billion in cash and short-term investments. This is significantly higher than the company’s total debt of US$937.7 million (all of which are convertible notes that are due in 2023 or 2025).

For the sake of conservatism, I also note that Okta had US$154.5 million in operating lease liabilities. But the company’s cash, short-term investments and long-term investments still comfortably outweigh the sum of its debt and operating lease liabilities (US$1.1 billion)

3. A management team with integrity, capability, and an innovative mindset

On integrity

Todd McKinnon cofounded Okta in 2009 with Frederic Kerrest. McKinnon, who’s 48 years old, has served as Okta’s CEO since the company’s founding. He has a strong pedigree in leading software companies, having been with salesforce.com from 2003 to 2009, and serving as its Head of Engineering prior to founding Okta. salesforce.com is one of the pioneering software-as-a-service companies. Kerrest, 43, is Okta’s COO (chief operating officer) and has been in the role since the year of the company’s founding. Kerrest is also a salesforce.com alumni; he joined in 2002 and stayed till 2007, serving as a senior executive. In my view, the young ages of McKinnon and Kerrest, as well as their long tenures with Okta, are positives.

The other important leaders in Okta include:

In FY2019, Okta’s senior leaders (McKinnon, Kerrest, Losch, Race, and Runyan) each received total compensation that ranged from US$2.3 million to US$5.1 million. These are reasonable sums. Furthermore, 72% to 88% of their total compensation was in the form of stock awards and stock options that vest over multi-year periods. This means that the compensation of Okta’s senior leaders are tied to the long run performance of the company’s stock price, which is in turn driven by the company’s business performance. So I think that my interests as a shareholder of Okta are well-aligned with the company’s management.

Moreover, both McKinnon and Kerrest own significant stakes in Okta. As of 1 April 2019, McKinnon and Kerrest controlled 7.98 million and 3.65 million shares of the company, respectively. These shares have a collective value of roughly US$1.5 billion right now. The high stakes that Okta’s two key leaders have lend further weight to my view that management’s interests are aligned with the company’s other shareholders.

I note that the shares held by McKinnon and Kerrest are mostly of the Class B variety. Okta has two stock classes: (1) Class B, which are not traded and hold 10 voting rights per share; and (2)  Class A, which are publicly traded and hold just 1 vote per share. McKinnon and Kerrest only controlled 10.1% of Okta’s total shares as of 1 April 2019, but they collectively held 50.7% of the company’s voting power. In fact, all of Okta’s senior leaders and directors together controlled 54.7% of Okta’s voting rights as of 1 April 2019 (this percentage dipped only slightly to 53.1% as of 31 January 2020). The concentration of Okta’s voting power in the hands of management (in particular McKinnon and Kerrest) means that I need to be comfortable with the company’s current leadership. I am.

On capability

From FY2015 to FY2020, Okta has seen its number of customers increase six-fold (43% per year) from 1,320 to 7,950. So the first thing I note is that Okta’s management has a terrific track record of growing its customer count.

To win customers, Okta currently offers over 6,500 integrations with IT (information technology) infrastructure providers, and cloud, mobile, and web apps. This is up from over 5,000 integrations as of 31 January 2017. The companies that are part of Okta’s integration network include services from tech giants such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com, salesforce.com and more. Impressively, software providers are increasingly being told by their customers that they have to be integrated with Okta before the software can be accepted. 

In my view, the integration also creates a potentially powerful network effect where more integration on Okta’s network leads to more customers, and more customers leads to even more integration. During the aforementioned Stratechery interview, McKinnon shared about the competitive edge that Okta enjoys because of its efforts in integrating thousands of apps: 

“[Question]: The average enterprise — maybe it’s hard to say because it varies so widely — how many SaaS services does a typical enterprise subscribe to?

[Todd McKinnon] TM: Especially for any company with over 5,000 employees, it’s thousands of apps. Apps that they’ve purchased commercially, the big ones you’ve heard of, the ones that are in niche industries or verticals you haven’t heard of, and then the ones built themselves, it’s thousands.

[Question]: And then Okta has to build an integration with all of those

[Todd McKinnon] TM: Yeah. One of the big things we did very early on was we got really good at a metadata-driven integration infrastructure, which allowed us to have this burgeoning catalog of pre-packaged integrations, which was really unique in the industry because it is a hundreds or for a big company, it’s thousands of applications.

[Question] And it ends up being a bit of a moat, right? It’s a traditional moat where you dig it up with hard work where you actually went in and you built all of these thousands of integrations, and anyone that wants to come along, if they have a choice of either recreating all the work you did or, we should just use Okta and it’s already sort of all taken care of.

[Todd McKinnon] TM: Yeah, and it’s one of the things people misunderstand on a couple of different levels. The first level is they just get the number wrong. “I think there’s ten, right?” Or I’ve heard of ten big applications, so I think if I connected the ten, that would be enough, which is just off by multiple orders of magnitude.

And then the second thing they get wrong is they think that, especially back in the day it was like, “Oh, there it’s going to be standards that do this.” It’s going to be SAML as a standard. There’s this standard called Open ID. And what we’ve found is that the standards were very thin, meaning they didn’t cover enough of the surface area of what the customers needed, so it might do simple login but it didn’t do directory replication, or not enough of the applications adhere to the standard. So there’s a lot more heterogeneity than people thought of so that moat was a lot wider, a lot faster than people expected.

[Question] Is it fair to say that it’s your goal or maybe it has happened that people thought there would be a standard like SAML that would take care of all of this, but it’s going to end up being that Okta as the standard?

[Todd McKinnon] TM: That is the goal and I think it’s evolving to where there are de facto standards. A big shift is that we have big companies that tell software vendors that if you want to sell to us, you have to integrate to Okta and they have to go to our platform, build the integration, have it be certified. So that’s not a technical standard per se, but it’s a de facto standard of an application that can be sold to a large enterprise.”

I also credit Okta’s management with the success that the company has found with its land-and-expand strategy. The strategy starts with the company landing a customer with an initial use case, and then expanding its relationship with the customer through more users or more use cases. The success can be illustrated through Okta’s strong dollar-based net retention rates (DBNRRs). The metric is a very important gauge for the health of a SaaS company’s business. It measures the change in revenue from all of Okta’s customers a year ago compared to today; it includes positive effects from upsells as well as negative effects from customers who leave or downgrade. Anything more than 100% indicates that the company’s customers, as a group, are spending more – Okta’s DBNRRs have been in the high-teens to high-twenties range over the past few years. There has been a noticeable downward trend in Okta’s DBNRR, but the figure of 119% in FY2020 is still impressive.

I also want to point out the presence of Ben Horowitz on Okta’s board of directors. Horowitz is a co-founder and partner in a venture capital firm I admire and that was partly named after him, Andreessen Horowitz (the firm, popularly known as a16z, is an early investor in Okta). Having Horowitz as a director allows Okta’s management to tap on a valuable source of knowledge.

On innovation

Okta is a pioneer in its field. It was one of the first companies that realised that a really important business could be built on the premise of a cloud-based software that secures and manages an individual’s digital identity for cloud-based applications. To me, that is fantastic proof of the innovative ability of Okta’s management. Stratechery’s interview of Todd McKinnon provided a great window on the thinking of him and his team in the early days of Okta’s founding:

“[Question] When Okta first came on the scene, it was Single Sign-on, so you could sign on in one place and then you’d be logged into other places, now it’s an Identity Cloud. Is that an actual shift in the product or strategy or is that just a shift in a marketing term?

[Todd McKinnon] TM: It’s interesting. When we started the company, you could see that cloud was going to be the future. We started 11 years ago, so in 2009, Amazon Web Services was out, Google Apps for Domains was out. So you could kind of see that infrastructure was going to go to the cloud, you could see that collaboration apps were going to go to the cloud. I was working at Salesforce at the time, so it was really clear that the apps stack was going to be in the cloud and we got really excited about what could be possible or what new types of platforms could be built to enable all this.

When we started, it’s funny, we called the first product, which was going to be a cloud single sign-on, we called it Wedge One. So not only was it the wedge, but it was like the first, first wedge. Now it turns out that in order to build cloud single sign on you had to build a lot of pretty advanced stuff behind the scenes to make that simple and seamless, you had to build a directory, you had to build a federation server, you had to build multi-factor authentication, and after we were into it for two or three or four years, we realized that there’s a whole identity system here so it’s much more than a wedge. In fact, it really can be a big part in doing all that enablement we set out to do.

[Question] That’s very interesting, so are you still on Wedge One? Did you ever make it to Wedge Two?

[Todd McKinnon] TM: (laughs) The Wedge keeps getting fatter. The Identity Cloud is pretty broad these days. It’s directory service, it’s reporting analytics, it’s multi-factor authentication, it does API Access Management. It’s very flexible, very extensible, so really the Identity Cloud now is an Identity Platform, it’s striving to really address any kind of identity use cases a customer has, both on the customer side, customer identity, and on the workforce side.

What’s interesting about it is that at the same time over the last eleven years, identity has gone from being something that’s really important maybe for Windows networks or around your Oracle applications to there are so different applications connected from so many types of devices and so many networks that identity is really critical, and we’re in this world now where ten years ago people were telling me “Hey, I’m not sure if it’s possible to build an independent identity company” to now it’s like everyone says, “Oh, it’s such an obvious category that the biggest technology companies in the world want to own it.” So it has been quite a shift.”

4. Revenue streams that are recurring in nature, either through contracts or customer-behaviour

Okta runs its business on a SaaS model and generates most of its revenue through multi-year subscriptions, which are recurring in nature. In FY2020, 94% of Okta’s total revenue of US$586.1 million came from subscriptions. The company’s average subscription term was 2.6 years as of 31 January 2020 and iInterestingly, Okta’s contracts are non-cancelable. The remaining 6% of Okta’s revenue in FY2020 was from professional services, where the company earns fees from helping its customers implement and optimise the use of its products.  

It’s important to me too that there’s no customer concentration in Okta’s business. No single customer accounted for more than 10% of the company’s revenue in each year from FY2018 to FY2020.

5. A proven ability to grow

There isn’t much historical financial data to study for Okta, since the company was only listed in April 2017. But I do like what I see:

A few key points to note about Okta’s financials:

• Okta has compounded its revenue at an impressive annual rate of 70.2% from FY2015 to FY2020. The rate of growth has slowed in recent years, but was still really strong at 46.7% in FY2020.
• Okta is still making losses, but the good thing is that it started to generate positive operating cash flow in FY2019 and positive free cash flow in FY2020.. 
• The company’s balance sheet remained robust throughout the timeframe under study, with significantly more cash and investments than debt.
• At first glance, Okta’s diluted share count appeared to increase sharply by 29.5% from FY2018 to FY2019. (I only started counting from FY2018 since Okta was listed in April 2017, which is in the first quarter of FY2018.) But the number I’m using is the weighted average diluted share count. Right after Okta got listed, it had a share count of around 91 million. Moreover, Okta’s weighted average diluted share count showed an acceptable growth rate (acceptable in the context of the company’s rapid revenue growth) of 9% in FY2020.

6. A high likelihood of generating a strong and growing stream of free cash flow in the future

Okta has already started to generate positive free cash flow and positive operating cash flow. Right now, the company has a poor trailing free cash flow margin (free cash flow as a percentage of revenue) of just 4.7%.

But over the long run, I think it’s likely that there is plenty of room for Okta’s free cash flow margin to expand. I showed in my recently published investment thesis for Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) that there are other larger SaaS companies such as Adobe, salesforce.com, and Veeva Systems that have much fatter free cash flow margins. Here’s the table I showed in my article on Alteryx:

Valuation

Okta has a target to grow its revenue by 30% to 35% annually from now till FY2024, and to have a free cash flow margin of between 20% and 25% at the end of that period. These goals were communicated by management just earlier this month during Okta’s Investor Day event. For perspective, Okta is projecting total revenue growth of 31% to 33% in FY2021.

Right now, Okta has a market capitalisation of US$16.08 billion against trailing revenue of US$586.1 million, which gives rise to a pretty darn high price-to-sales (PS) ratio of 27.4. 

For perspective, if I assume that Okta has a 25% free cash flow margin today, then the company would have a price-to-free cash flow ratio of 110 based on the current P/S ratio (27.4 divided by 25%).

But there are strong positives in Okta’s favour. The company has: (1) Revenue that is low compared to a large and possibly fast-growing market; (2) a software product that is mission-critical for users; (3) a large and rapidly expanding customer base; and (4) sticky customers who have been willing to significantly increase their spending with the company over time. I believe that with these traits, there’s a high chance that Okta will continue posting excellent revenue growth – and in turn, excellent free cash flow growth – in time to come. 

The risks involved

Okta has a short history in the stock market, given that its IPO was just three years ago in April 2017. I typically stay away from young IPOs. But I am willing to back Okta because I think its business holds promise for fast-growth for a long period of time (the company’s identity-as-a-service business is very important for the digital transformation that so many companies are currently undergoing). But Okta’s young age as a publicly-listed company is still a risk I’m keeping tabs on.

Competition is a risk I’m watching too. In its FY2018 and FY2019 annual reports, Okta named technology heavyweights such as Alphabet, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle as competitors. In its FY2020 annual report, Okta singled out Microsoft as its “principal competitor.” All of them have significantly stronger financial might compared to Okta. But I’m comforted by Okta’s admirable defense of its turf – the proof is in Okta’s strong DBNRRs and impressive growth in customer-numbers over the years. Moreover, in late 2019, market researchers Gartner and Forrester also separately named Okta as a leader in its field. 

Okta’s high valuation is another risk. The high valuation adds pressure on the company to continue executing well; any missteps could result in a painful fall in its stock price. This is a risk I’m comfortable taking.

Hacking is also a risk I’m keeping an eye on. Logging into applications is often a time-sensitive and mission-critical part of an employee’s work. Okta’s growth and reputation could be severely diminished if the company’s service is disrupted, leading to customers being locked out of the software they require to run their business for an extended period of time.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in severe disruptions to economic activity in many parts of the world, the US included. I think that the mission-critical nature of Okta’s service means that its business is less likely to be harmed significantly by any coronavirus-driven recession. But there are still headwinds. In an April 2020 statement, Okta’s CFO William Losch said:

“We continue to closely monitor the business environment and impacts related to COVID-19. We remain optimistic about the demand for our solutions. Our highly recurring business model enables a high degree of predictability and allows us to maintain confidence in our revenue outlook for the first quarter and fiscal year 2021, which we are reaffirming.

We do, however, expect some near-term billings headwinds as customers adjust to the current business environment. Conversely, we expect our operating loss and loss per share to be better than expected as a result of reduced spend. This is primarily related to lower sales and marketing costs, driven in part by temporary travel restrictions, lower employee-related costs, and moving Oktane and other events to virtual formats. We have the ability to further adjust spend depending on the market environment and will be flexible in how and when we invest to extend our market leadership.”

Lastly, the following are all yellow-to-red flags for me regarding Okta: (1) The company’s DBNRR comes in at less than 100% for an extended period of time; (2) it fails to increase its number of customers; and (3) it’s unable to convert revenue into free cash flow at a healthy clip in the future.

The Good Investors’ conclusion

In summary, Okta has:

1. A valuable cloud-based identity-as-a-service software platform that is often mission-critical for customers;
2. high levels of recurring revenue;
3. outstanding revenue growth rates;
4. positive operating cash flow and free cash flow, with the potential for much higher free cash flow margins in the future;
5. a large, mostly untapped addressable market that could potentially grow in the years ahead;
6. an impressive track record of winning customers and increasing their spending; and
7. capable leaders who are in the same boat as the company’s other shareholders

Okta does have a rich valuation, so I’m taking on valuation risk. There are also other risks to note, such as competitors with heavy financial muscle, and headwinds due to COVID-19. But after weighing the pros and cons, I’m happy to continue having Okta be in my family’s investment portfolio.

Disclaimer: The Good Investors is the personal investing blog of two simple guys who are passionate about educating Singaporeans about stock market investing. By using this Site, you specifically agree that none of the information provided constitutes financial, investment, or other professional advice. It is only intended to provide education. Speak with a professional before making important decisions about your money, your professional life, or even your personal life.

DoucSign (NASDAQ: DOCU) is one of the 50-plus companies that’s in my family’s portfolio. I first bought DocuSign shares for the portfolio in December 2018 at a price of US$41 and I’ve not sold any of the shares I’ve bought. 

The purchase has worked out very well for my family’s portfolio thus far, with DocuSign’s share price being around US$79 now. But we’ve not even owned the company’s shares for two years, and it is always important to think about how the company’s business will evolve going forward. What follows is my thesis for why I still continue to hold DocuSign shares.

Company description

DocuSign provides DocuSign eSignature, currently the world’s leading cloud-based e-signature solution. This software service enables users to sign a document securely using almost any device from virtually anywhere in the world. It is the core part of the broader DocuSign Agreement Cloud, which is a suite of software services – again all delivered over the cloud – that automates and connects the entire agreement process. DocuSign Agreement Cloud includes:

• Automatic generation of an agreement from data in other systems; 
• Support of negotiation-workflow; 
• Collection of payment after signatures;
• Use of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse agreement-documents for risks and opportunities; and 
• Hundreds of integrations with other systems, so that the agreement process can be seamlessly combined with other business processes and data

At the end of its fiscal year ended 31 January 2020 (FY2020), DocuSign had over 585,000 paying customers and hundreds of millions of users. From its founding in 2003 through to FY2019, the company had processed over 1 billion successful transactions (around 300 million in FY2019 alone). DocuSign defines a successful transaction as the completion of all required actions (such as signing or approving documents) by all relevant parties in an Envelope; an Envelope is, in turn, a digital container used to send one or more documents for signature or approval to the relevant recipients.

DocuSign serves customers of all sizes, from sole proprietorships to the companies that are among the top 2,000 publicly-traded enterprises. The company’s customers also come from many different industries, as the chart below illustrates.

For a geographical perspective of DocuSign’s business, its users are in over 180 countries. But in FY2020, 82% of the company’s revenue came from the US. 

Investment thesis

I had previously laid out my six-criteria investment framework in The Good Investors. I will use the same framework to describe my investment thesis for DocuSign.

1. Revenues that are small in relation to a large and/or growing market, or revenues that are large in a fast-growing market

Has it ever occured to you that the innocuous act of signing documents with pen-and-paper can actually be a significantly wasteful activity for companies? The thought struck me when I was doing research on DocuSign before I bought its shares. Think about it. Signing a paper document requires you to fax, scan, email, snail-mail, courier, and file. DocuSign’s solution can save us both time and money.

There are many use-cases for DocuSign’s software services, ranging from sales contracts to employment contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and more. In fact, DocuSign has a customer that has implemented over 300 use-cases. DocuSign documents are legally accepted and protected with cryptographic technology from tampering. The documents also have a full audit trail, including party names, email addresses, public IP addresses, and a time-stamped record of each individual’s interaction with a document.

DocuSign estimated that it had a total addressable market of US$25 billion in 2017, using (1) the number of companies in its core markets, and (2) its internal estimate of an annual contract value based on each respective company’s size, industry, and location. This estimate remains unchanged (it was mentioned in the company’s FY2020 annual report), though recent business moves may have significantly expanded its addressable market. More on this later. At just US$974.0 million, DocuSign’s revenue in FY2020 is merely a fraction of its estimated market opportunity.

I believe that DocuSign’s addressable market will likely grow over time. There are clear benefits to e-signatures. A 2015 third-party study by Intellicap (commissioned by DocuSign) found that the company’s enterprise customers derived an average incremental value of US$36 per transaction (with a range of US$5 to US$100) when using the company’s software as compared to traditional paper-processes. In FY2020, 82% of all the successful transactions that flowed through DocuSign’s platform were completed in less than 24 hours, while 50% were completed within just 15 minutes. DocuSign’s services help companies save money and time.

2. A strong balance sheet with minimal or a reasonable amount of debt

As of 31 January 2020, DocuSign held US$895.9 million in cash, short-term investments, and long-term investments. This is nearly twice the company’s total debt of US$465.3 million (all of which are convertible notes). For the sake of conservatism, I also note that DocuSign had US$183.2 million in operating lease liabilities. But the company’s cash, short-term investments and long-term investments still comfortably outweigh the sum of the company’s debt and operating lease liabilities (US$648.5 million). 

3. A management team with integrity, capability, and an innovative mindset

On integrity

Leading DocuSign as CEO is Daniel Springer, 57, who joined the company in January 2017. Among other key leaders in DocuSign are:

• Scott Olrich, Chief Operating Officer, 48
• Michael Sheridan, Chief Financial Officer, 55
• Loren Alhadeff, Chief Revenue Officer, 41
• Kirsten Wolberg, Chief Technology and Operations Officer, 52

Most of them have relatively short tenure with DocuSign, but have collectively clocked decades in senior leadership roles in other technology companies.

DocuSign has opted not to share details about its compensation structure for senior management because of its status as an “emerging growth company.” And Springer’s total compensation for FY2019 was a princely sum of US$13.4 million. But I take heart in this: 94% of Springer’s total compensation in FY2019 came from stock awards, and around 70% of the stock awards vest over a period of four years. The multi-year vesting of the stock awards means that Springer’s compensation is tied to the long run performance of DocuSign’s stock price, which is in turn governed by its business performance. So I think Springer’s interests are aligned with mine as a shareholder of the company.

Notably, Springer also controlled 2.3 million shares of DocuSign as of 31 March 2019, a stake that’s worth a sizable US$211 million at the current share price.  

On capability

From FY2013 to FY2020, DocuSign has seen its number of customers increase more than 10-fold (41% per year) from 54,000 to 585,000. So the first thing I note is that DocuSign’s management has a terrific track record of growing its customer count.

To win customers, DocuSign’s software service offers over 300 pre-built integrations with widely used business applications from other tech giants such as salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP, Google, and more. These third-party applications are mostly in the areas of CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), and HCM (human capital management). DocuSign also has APIs (application programming interfaces) that allow its software to be easily integrated with its customers’ own apps. 

I also credit DocuSign’s management with the success that the company has found with its land-and-expand strategy. The strategy starts with the company landing a customer with an initial use case, and then expanding its relationship with the customer through other use cases. The success can be illustrated through DocuSign’s strong dollar-based net retention rates (DBNRRs). The metric is a very important gauge for the health of a SaaS (software-as-a-service) company’s business. It measures the change in revenue from all of DocuSign’s customers a year ago compared to today; it includes positive effects from upsells as well as negative effects from customers who leave or downgrade. Anything more than 100% indicates that the company’s customers, as a group, are spending more – DocuSign’s DBNRRs have been in the low-teens to mid-teens range in the past few years.

On innovation

I think DocuSign’s management scores well on the innovation front, since the company has been busy with using blockchain technology and AI to improve its services. 

Blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrencies and DocuSign has been experimenting with blockchain-based smart contracts since 2015. In June 2018, DocuSign joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and showed how a DocuSign agreement can be automatically written onto the Ethereum blockchain. Here’s an example of a smart contract  described by DocuSign:

“A smart contract turns a contract into something like a computer program. The Internet-connected program monitors data and triggers actions relevant to the contract’s terms. For example, a crop-insurance smart contract might use a trusted Internet feed of weather data. If the temperature goes above 85 degrees Fahrenheit in April, the smart contract will automatically trigger a crop-insurance payout, again via the Internet. This total automation eliminates ambiguity and promises large savings in time and effort for all parties involved.”

It’s early days for DocuSign’s use of blockchain, but I’m watching its moves here. DocuSign’s management acknowledges that many of the company’s customers don’t yet see the value of blockchain technology in the agreement process. But the company still believes in blockchain’s potential.  

DocuSign has been working with AI since at least 2017 when it acquired machine-learning firm Appuri during the year. In February 2020, DocuSign inked an agreement to acquire Seal Software for US$188 million. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of DocuSign’s FY2021. Seal Software was founded in 2010 and uses AI to analyse contracts. For example, Seal Software can search for legal concepts (and not just keywords) in large collections of documents, and automatically extract and compare critical clauses and terms. Prior to the acquisition, DocuSign was already tacking Seal Software’s services onto DocuSign Agreement Cloud. The combination of Seal Software and DocuSign’s technologies have helped a “large international information-services company” reduce legal-review time by 75%. Ultimately, DocuSign thinks that Seal Software will be able to strengthen DocuSign Agreement Cloud’s AI foundation.

Speaking of DocuSign Agreement Cloud, it was released in March 2019. As mentioned earlier, it includes multiple software services. DocuSign sees DocuSign Agreement Cloud as a new category of cloud software that connects existing cloud services in the realms of marketing, sales, human resources, enterprise resource planning, and more, into agreement processes. 

I see two huge positives that come with the introduction of multi-product sales. Firstly, it will likely lead to each DocuSign customer using more of the company’s products. This means that DocuSign could be plugged into an increasing number of its customers’ business processes, resulting in stickier customers. Secondly, DocuSign thinks that covering a wider scope of the entire agreement process could roughly double its market opportunity from the current size of US$25 billion to around US$50 billion. 

4. Revenue streams that are recurring in nature, either through contracts or customer-behaviour

DocuSign’s business is built nearly entirely on subscriptions, which generate recurring revenue for the company. Customers of DocuSign gain access to the company’s software platform through a subscription, which typically ranges from one to three years.  In FY2020, FY2019, and FY2018, more than 93% of DocuSign’s revenue in each fiscal year came from subscriptions to its cloud-based software platform; the rest of the revenue came from services such as helping the company’s customers deploy its software efficiently. 

It’s worth noting too that there is no customer-concentration with DocuSign. There was no customer that accounted for more than 10% of the company’s revenue in FY2020.

5. A proven ability to grow

There isn’t much historical financial data to study for DocuSign, since the company was only listed in April 2018. But I do like what I see:

A few notable points from DocuSign’s financials:

• DocuSign has compounded its revenue at an impressive annual rate of 40.4% from FY2016 to FY2020. The rate of growth has not slowed much, coming in at a still-impressive 38.9% in FY2020.
• DocuSign is still making losses, but the good thing is that it started to generate positive operating cash flow and free cash flow in FY2018.
• Annual growth in operating cash flow from FY2018 to FY2020 was strong, at 45.1%. Free cash flow has increased at a much slower pace, but the company is investing for growth. 
• The company’s balance sheet remained robust throughout the timeframe under study, with significantly more cash and investments than debt.
• At first glance, DocuSign’s diluted share count appeared to increase sharply by 30.7% from FY2019 to FY2020. (I only started counting from FY2019 since DocuSign was listed in April 2018, which is in the first quarter of FY2019.) But the number I’m using is the weighted average diluted share count. Right after DocuSign got listed, it had a share count of around 152 million. Moreover, DocuSign’s weighted average diluted share count showed acceptable year-on-year growth rates (acceptable in the context of the company’s rapid revenue growth) in the first, second, and third quarters of FY2020.

6. A high likelihood of generating a strong and growing stream of free cash flow in the future

DocuSign has already started to generate free cash flow. Right now, the company has a poor trailing free cash flow margin (free cash flow as a percentage of revenue) of just 4.5%.

But over the long run, I think it’s likely that there is plenty of room for DocuSign’s free cash flow margin to expand. I showed in my recently published investment thesis for Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) that there are other larger SaaS companies such as Adobe, salesforce.com, and Veeva Systems that have much fatter free cash flow margins. Here’s the table I showed in my article on Alteryx:

Valuation

Right now, DocuSign has a market capitalisation of US$14.34 billion against trailing revenue of US$974.0 million. These numbers give rise to a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 14.7, which makes the company look pretty darn expensive. For perspective, if I assume that DocuSign has a 30% free cash flow margin today, then the company would have a price-to-free cash flow ratio of 49 based on the current P/S ratio (14.7 divided by 30%). 

But DocuSign also has a few strong positives going for it. The company has: (1) revenue that is low compared to a fast-growing addressable market; (2) a business that solves important pain points for customers; (3) a large and rapidly expanding customer base; and (4) sticky customers who have been willing to significantly increase their spending with the company over time. I believe that with these traits, there’s a high chance that DocuSign will continue posting excellent revenue growth – and in turn, excellent free cash flow growth – in the years ahead. 

The current high valuation for DocuSign does mean that its share price is likely going to be more volatile than the stock market as a whole. I’m also keeping in mind that stocks have been very volatile of late because of COVID-19 fears. But the potential volatility is something I’m very comfortable with.

The risks involved

DocuSign has a short history in the stock market, given that its IPO was just two years ago in April 2018. I typically stay away from young IPOs. But I’m making an exception for DocuSign because I think its business holds promise for fast-growth for a long period of time. But the company’s young age as a publicly-listed company is still a risk I’m watching.

Adobe is a much larger SaaS company with trailing revenue of US$11.7 billion. Through its Adobe Sign product, Adobe is the primary competitor of DocuSign. So far, DocuSign has defended its turf admirably. This is shown in DocuSign’s strong revenue and customer growth rates. But Adobe’s larger financial might compared to DocuSign means competition is a risk. 

Another important risk for DocuSign relates to data breaches. DocuSign handles sensitive information about its customers due to the nature of its business. If there are any serious data breaches in DocuSign’s software services, the company could lose the confidence of customers and the public, leading to growth difficulties. The signing of documents may be highly time-sensitive events. So if there is any significant downtime in DocuSign’s services, it could also lead to an erosion of trust among existing as well as prospective customers. So far, DocuSign has done a great job by providing 99.99% availability in FY2020. 

Valuation is another risk to consider. DocuSign’s high P/S ratio means that the market expects rapid growth from the company. So if the business performance disappoints subsequently, market sentiment could turn quickly on DocuSign, leading to a cratering stock price.

Earlier, I discussed the advantages that the launch of DocuSign Agreement Cloud brought to the company. But there are downsides too. For instance, multi-product sales involves higher complexity and a longer sales cycle; these factors negatively affected DocuSign’s billings growth and net dollar-based retention rate in the first quarter of FY2020. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused business activity around the world to slow tremendously, with many countries being in various states of lockdown. A lengthy sales cycle could hamper DocuSign’s business in the current environment. For now, DocuSign’s business does not seem to have been impacted by COVID-19. Here’s CEO Dan Springer’s comment on the matter in DocuSign’s FY2020 fourth-quarter earnings call:

“[T]he vast majority of our implementations are done remote. And of course, if you think about the perfect example of that it’s our web and mobile customers, where they never actually have to speak. Not only do they don’t have to have us in person they don’t need to speak to us to onboard. … We do find with some of our larger enterprise customers that they get more value when some of the installation is done on their premises. But we have not had the opportunity in the past to consider doing that completely remotely. And it may be in the new way of business over the next X period of time here then we’ll do more of it.”

And when DocuSign’s management was asked in the same earnings call if its growth would be affected by a recession, Springer answered:

“Yes, I don’t. Because, I think, for most of our customers, at least half of the focus is around efficiency. And people see the incredibly high ROI. And I can’t speak for all-digital transformation programs, of course, but as I think about the ones that are DocuSign-centric people are laser-focused on the ROI they get from getting rid of those manual processes, the wasted labor, getting rid of things like the transportation cost, the shipping, et cetera.

That’s a big focus. So I don’t think in a recession you would see people pull back on that. I would say that any time if you had a significant recession, you expect people to kind of shoot first ask questions later and that could lead to some delays. But, in general, we think the business case just gets stronger when people need to find those efficiencies.”

Lastly, the following are all yellow-to-red flags for me regarding DocuSign: (1) The company’s DBNRR comes in at less than 100% for an extended period of time; (2) it fails to increase its number of customers; and (3) it’s unable to convert revenue into free cash flow at a healthy clip in the future.

The Good Investors’ conclusion

Summing up DocuSign, it has:

1. Valuable cloud-based software services in the agreements space that solves customers’ pain-points;
2. high levels of recurring revenue;
3. outstanding revenue growth rates;
4. positive operating cash flow and free cash flow, with the potential for much higher free cash flow margins in the future;
5. a large, growing, and mostly untapped addressable market;
6. an impressive track record of winning customers and increasing their spending; and
7. capable leaders who are in the same boat as the company’s other shareholders

The company does have a premium valuation, so I’m taking on valuation risk. There are also other risks to note, such as strong competition and a longer sales cycle that may not be conducive for a business environment that’s struggling with COVID-19. But after weighing the pros and cons, I have to agree with the idea of having DocuSign continue to stay in my family’s investment portfolio.

Disclaimer: The Good Investors is the personal investing blog of two simple guys who are passionate about educating Singaporeans about stock market investing. By using this Site, you specifically agree that none of the information provided constitutes financial, investment, or other professional advice. It is only intended to provide education. Speak with a professional before making important decisions about your money, your professional life, or even your personal life.

A few days ago, I received a text from a friend asking the question that is the title of this article. He knew that Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), an online travel agent, is one of the 50-plus companies that’s in my family’s investment portfolio.

Stalled growth

On 18 February 2020, I published my investment thesis on Booking. In it, I wrote that “The world – particularly China – is currently battling COVID-19. If the situation worsens, Booking’s business could be hurt.” Little did I know how badly Booking would suffer. International travel activities have essentially grounded to a halt since the publication of my thesis for Booking, with many countries closing their borders to control the spread of COVID-19.

In particular, the businesses of hotels and airlines across the globe have been crushed. A few days ago, Arne Sorenson, CEO of hotel operator Marriott International, said that the company’s seeing revenue declines of more than 75% in the US. At home, Singapore Airlines cut 96% of its flight capacity last week. Booking, as an online travel agent focusing on accommodations, is also facing a brutal operating environment.

Confidence 

What gives me the confidence that Booking can survive? The company is the largest online travel agent in the world. The entire travel industry is awash in pain at the moment. But this also gives Booking the opportunity to win even more market share if some of its smaller/weaker competitors falter.

I believe that the COVID-19 crisis will blow over eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later, so that the incredible human suffering that’s currently happening can end as soon as possible). This will allow the travel industry to return to strength. When this happens, Booking will be in an even stronger position compared to before.

But Booking has to survive from now till then. I think the chances are very good that the company will. At the end of 2019, Booking held US$8.5 billion in cash, short-term investments, and long-term investments (this sum excludes US$3.3 billion in strategic investments) against total debt of US$8.6 billion.

I would prefer Booking to have significantly more cash than debt. But Booking’s debt is mostly long-term in nature (88.5% comes due on or after 31 December 2020). Moreover, the company’s debt has well-staggered maturities as shown in the table below. The earliest due-date for Booking’s long-term debt is September 2021 and it involves a manageable sum of US$1 billion. So there’s plenty of time for Booking to maneuver, and to wait for the travel industry’s health to improve.

No guarantee

But there’s no guarantee that Booking will survive. It could eventually crumble should the travel market undergo a long winter if COVID-19 proves to be a particularly tricky disease to combat. This is where diversification is important. 

I mentioned earlier that Booking is one of the 50-plus companies in my family’s investment portfolio. Even if Booking fails to survive, my family’s portfolio will. Diversification is how I guard the portfolio against specific-company risks. With diversification, my family and I are able to stay invested in Booking and participate in its potential recovery without having to worry about a significant hit to the portfolio. 

Disclaimer: The Good Investors is the personal investing blog of two simple guys who are passionate about educating Singaporeans about stock market investing. By using this Site, you specifically agree that none of the information provided constitutes financial, investment, or other professional advice. It is only intended to provide education. Speak with a professional before making important decisions about your money, your professional life, or even your personal life.

Singapore Airlines (SGX: C6L) recently announced a massive round of fundraising. In all, Singapore’s national carrier is looking to raise S$15 billion. The first slice of the fundraising involves a S$5.3 billion rights shares issue, and a S$3.5 billion tranche of mandatory convertible bonds (MCBs).

Temasek Holdings is one of the Singapore government’s investment arms and the current major shareholder of Singapore Airlines (SIA) with a 55% stake. It has committed to mop up all the rights shares issue and MCBs that other SIA shareholders do not want.

My blogging partner Jeremy Chia published a wonderful article yesterday. He shared his thoughts on why he’s not interested in investing in SIA despite Temasek’s promise to provide up to S$15 billion in capital. I’m not here to share my thoughts on investing in SIA. Instead, I’m here to provide you with a factual breakdown of the numbers behind SIA’s rights shares issue and MCBs.

I recognise that SIA’s latest fundraising activity is complex, and there’s a lot of confusion about it. I want to help clear the air, to the best of my abilities. The Good Investors exists to demystify investing for you – so here I am!

Details of the rights shares issue of Singapore Airlines

Here are the important numbers concerning SIA’s rights shares issue:

• Total sum: S$5.3 billion.
• Number of rights shares to be issued: Up to 1.778 billion rights shares to be issued, on the basis of 3 rights shares for every 2 shares of SIA that currently exist. There are 1.185 billion SIA shares that exist right now.
• Price per rights share: S$3.00.
• Renounceable? Yes, this rights shares issue is renounceable, so you will get to trade the rights.
• Changes in SIA’s book value per share (BVPS) and earnings per share (EPS) because of the rights issue: As of 31 December 2019, SIA’s BVPS and trailing-12-months EPS were S$10.25 and S$0.67, respectively. After the rights shares issue, the BVPS will fall to around S$5.89 while the EPS will decline to S$0.27, assuming everything else stays constant.
• What you have to effectively pay for SIA’s shares: At the time of writing (11:20 am, 30 March 2020), SIA’s share price is S$5.82. If you subscribe for your full allotment of rights shares, you’re effectively paying a price of S$4.13 per share for SIA’s shares. The math works this way: Effective price per share = [S$5.82 + (S$3.00 x 1.5)] / 2.5.
• The effective valuations you’re getting: At an effective share price of S$4.13, SIA will have a price-to-book ratio of 0.7 and a price-to-earnings ratio of 15.

Details of the MCBs of Singapore Airlines

For the MCBs, do note that the total sum SIA is looking for is S$9.7 billion. But the current tranche involves just S$3.5 billion. The key financial numbers for the current tranche of MCBs are as follows:

• Total sum: S$3.5 billion.
• Number of rights MCBs to be issued: Up to S$3.5 billion, in the denomination of S$1.00 per rights MCB, on the basis of 295 rights MCBs for every 100 shares of SIA that currently exist. As mentioned earlier, there are 1.185 billion SIA shares that exist right now.
• Issue price per rights MCB: S$1.00, meaning you’ll pay S$1.00 to purchase each rights MCB.
• Renounceable? Yes, this rights MCB issue is renounceable, so you will get to trade the rights.
• Maturity date of MCB: 10 years from the date of issue of the rights MCBs.
• Conversion terms of MCB: SIA is obliged to convert the rights MCBs into SIA shares when the MCBs mature. The conversion price is S$4.84 per SIA share. When the MCBs are converted at the maturity date (10 years from the date of issue), every S$1,000 worth of the MCBs will “grow” to S$1,806.11. This S$1,806.11 will then be converted into SIA shares at a price of S$4.84 each, giving us 373 SIA shares. The math works this way: Number of shares obtained upon conversion = S$1,806.11 / S$4.84
• Redemption terms of the MCB: SIA has the right – but not the obligation – to redeem the MCBs every six months from the date of issue at a certain price, giving you a certain yield. If the MCBs have yet to be redeemed when we hit the 10-year mark from the date of issue, SIA is obliged to convert the MCBs into SIA shares, as mentioned earlier. The redemption prices and yields are given in the table below. Note that you cannot ask for the redemption – it is entirely up to SIA to decide.

• What you’re effectively paying for SIA’s shares under the MCB, assuming it is converted: As mentioned earlier, if the MCBs are converted, every S$1,000 in MCBs will be converted into 373 shares. This gives rise to an effective price of S$2.68 per SIA share under the MCB. The math works this way: Effective price paid = S$1,000 / 373 shares. 
• What you’re effectively paying for SIA’s shares, in all, under the MCB, assuming it is converted: But to get hold of the MCBs, you’ll have to own SIA shares. Every 100 shares has a full allotment of 295 rights MCBs. At the time of writing, SIA’s share price is S$5.82. This works out to an overall effective price of S$3.47 per share. Here’s the math: Overall effective price paid = ([100 x S$5.82) + (295 x S$2.68)] / (100 +295). 
• Circumstances where you’ll make money on the MCBs alone (ignoring what happens to your SIA stake): There are a few scenarios where you’ll make a profit: (1) SIA redeems the MCBs before they are converted; (2) SIA allows the MCBs to convert into shares 10 years later and SIA’s share price is significantly higher than S$2.68 at that point in time. To be clear, the price of S$2.68 is the price you’re effectively paying for SIA’s shares in the event of the MCBs’ conversion. If SIA’s share price is around S$2.68 at the point of conversion, it’s very likely you’ll be losing money on the MCBs;  if SIA’s share price is lower than S$2.68 at the point of conversion, you’ll be losing money on the MCBs.
• When is it beneficial for SIA to redeem the MCBs? Redemption of the MCBs will require SIA to fork out cash, which negatively impacts SIA’s financial health. On the other hand, the conversion of the MCBs does not require SIA to dole out any cash. So from this perspective, it’s beneficial for SIA to not redeem the MCBs at all. This is important to note for the MCB holders for cash-flow-planning purposes, since SIA could very well choose not to redeem the MCBs.

Other important points to note

Shareholders of Singapore Airlines can choose to participate in the company’s fundraising activity in one of the following ways:

1. Subscribe for both the rights issue and rights MCBs
2. Subscribe for just the rights issue but not the rights MCBs
3. Subscribe for the rights MCBs but not the rights issue
4. Do not subscribe for both the rights issue and rights MCBs

If you’re a Singapore Airlines shareholder and you choose the fourth option, you can still recover some capital by selling the rights issues and rights MCBs (both are renounceable, so the rights can be actively traded). But you will face massive dilution, since the airline’s share count will increase significantly.

I hope laying out all these numbers will help you – if you’re a Singapore Airlines shareholder or are interested in its shares and/or MCBs – to make a better-informed decision.

Disclaimer: The Good Investors is the personal investing blog of two simple guys who are passionate about educating Singaporeans about stock market investing. By using this Site, you specifically agree that none of the information provided constitutes financial, investment, or other professional advice. It is only intended to provide education. Speak with a professional before making important decisions about your money, your professional life, or even your personal life.

Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) is one of the 50-plus companies that’s in my family’s portfolio. I first bought Alteryx shares for the portfolio in September 2019 at a price of US$118 and I’ve not sold any of the shares I’ve bought.

The purchase has not worked out well for my family’s portfolio thus far, with Alteryx’s share price being around US$98 now. But we’ve not even owned the company’s shares for a year, and it is always important to think about how the company’s business will evolve going forward. What follows is my thesis for why I still continue to hold Alteryx shares.

Company description

Alteryx provides a self-service subscription-based software platform that allows organisations to easily scrub and blend data from multiple sources and perform sophisticated analysis to obtain actionable insights.

The company’s platform can interact with nearly all data sources. These include traditional databases offered by the likes of IBM, Oracle, and SAP, as well as newer offerings such as those from MongoDB, Amazon Web Services, Google Analytics, and even social media.

Once data from different sources are fed into Alteryx’s platform, it cleans and blends the data. Users can easily build configurable and sophisticated analytical workflows on the platform through drag-and-drop tools. The workflows can be easily automated and shared within the users’ organisation, and the results can be displayed through Alteryx’s integrations with data-visualisation software from companies such as Tableau Software and Qlik. Here’s a chart showing the various use cases for Alteryx’s data analytics platform:

At the end of 2019, Alteryx had around 6,100 customers, of all sizes, in more than 90 countries. These customers come from a wide variety of industries and include more than 700 of the Global 2000 companies. The Global 2000 is compiled by Forbes and it’s a list of the top 2,000 public-listed companies in the world ranked according to a combination of their revenue, profits, assets, and market value. With thousands of customers, it’s no surprise that Alteryx does not have any customer concentration – no single customer accounted for more than 10% of the company’s revenue in the three years through 2019. The graphic below illustrates the diversity of Alteryx’s customer base:

Despite having customers in over 90 countries, Alteryx is currently still a US-centric company. In 2019, 71% of its revenue came from the US. The UK is the only other country that accounted for more than 10% of Alteryx’s revenue in 2019 (10.7%).

Investment thesis

I had previously laid out my six-criteria investment framework in The Good Investors. I will use the same framework to describe my investment thesis for Alteryx.

1. Revenues that are small in relation to a large and/or growing market, or revenues that are large in a fast-growing market

Alteryx earned US$417.9 million in revenue in 2019. This is significantly lower than the US$73 billion addressable market that the company is currently seeing. It comprises two parts:

1. US$49 billion in the global big data and analytics software market (according to a July 2017 IDC report) which includes the US$28 billion global analytics and business intelligence market (according to a January 2019 Gartner report) 
2. A US$24 billion slice, based on Alteryx’s estimate of the spend associated with 47 million spreadsheet users worldwide who worked on advanced data preparation and analytics in 2018 (according to an April 2019 IDC report)

I believe that better days are ahead for Alteryx for a few reasons:

• I mentioned earlier that the company’s data analytics platform can interact with nearly all data sources. This interactivity is important. A 2015 Harvard Business Review study sponsored by Alteryx found that 64% of organizations use five or more sources of data for analytics.
• Market researcher IDC predicted in late 2018 that the quantity of data in the world (generated, captured, and replicated) would compound at an astounding rate of 61% per year, from 33 zettabytes then to 175 zettabytes in 2025. That’s staggering. 1 zettabyte equals to 10¹² gigabytes.
• A 2013 survey on more than 400 companies by business consultancy group Bain found that only 4% of them had the appropriate human and technological assets to derive meaningful insights from their data. In fact, Alteryx’s primary competitors are manual processes performed on spreadsheets, or custom-built approaches. These traditional methods for data analysis involve multiple steps, require the support of technical teams, and are slow (see chart below).
• Crucially, Alteryx’s self-service data analytics platform is scalable, efficient, and can be mastered and used by analysts with no coding skill or experience. I think this leads to a few good things for Alteryx. First, it democratises access to sophisticated data analytics for companies, and hence opens up Alteryx’s market opportunity. Second, it places Alteryx’s platform in a sweet spot of riding on a growing trend (the explosion in data generated) as well as addressing a pain-point for many organisations (the lack of resources to analyse data, and the laborious way that data analysis is traditionally done).

(Traditional way to perform data analysis)

2. A strong balance sheet with minimal or a reasonable amount of debt

As of 31 December 2019, Alteryx held US$974.9 million in cash, short-term investments, and long-term investments. This is comfortably higher than the company’s total debt of US$698.5 million (all of which are convertible notes).

3. A management team with integrity, capability, and an innovative mindset

On integrity

Alteryx was listed in March 2017, so there’s only a short history to study when it comes to management. But I do like what I see.

The company was founded in 1997. One of its co-founders, Dean Stoecker, 63, has held the roles of CEO and chairman since its establishment. Another of Alteryx’s co-founders is 57-year-old Olivia Duane Adams, the company’s current chief customer officer. The third co-founder, Ned Harding, 52, was a key technology leader in the company and left in July 2018; he remains an advisor to Alteryx’s software engineering teams. The company’s chief technology officer role is currently filled by Derek Knudsen, 46. He stepped into the position in August 2018  after Harding’s departure. Knudsen had accumulated over 20 years of experience working with technology in companies in senior leadership positions before joining Alteryx.

Stoecker and Duane Adams collectively controlled nearly 10 million Alteryx shares as of 31 March 2019. These shares are worth around US$980 million at the company’s current share price of US$98. That’s a large stake and it likely aligns the interests of Stoecker and Duane Adams’ with Alteryx’s other shareholders.

Alteryx has two share classes: (1) The publicly-traded Class A shares with 1 voting right per share; and (2) the non-traded Class B shares with 10 voting rights each. Stoecker and Duane Adams’ Alteryx shares were mostly of the Class B variety. So, they controlled 47.9% of the voting power in the company despite holding only 16% of the total shares. Collectively, Alteryx’s key leaders controlled 54.1% of the company’s voting rights as of 31 March 2019.

Having clear control over Alteryx means that management can easily implement compensation plans that fatten themselves at the expense of shareholders. The good thing is that the compensation structure for Alteryx’s management looks sensible to me.

In 2018, 70% to 79.7% of the compensation of Alteryx’s management team came from long-term incentives. These incentives include restricted stock units (RSUs) and stock options that vest over multi-year periods. There is room for some misalignment to creep in though – as far as I can tell, there is no clear description given by Alteryx on the performance metrics that management must meet in order to earn their compensation. But I don’t see this as a dealbreaker. Because of the multi-year vesting period for the RSUs and stock options, Alteryx’s management will do well over time only if the share price does well – and the share price will do well only if the business does well. From this perspective, the interests of management and shareholders are still well-aligned.

On capability and innovation

Alteryx’s business has changed dramatically over time since its founding. In its early days, the company was selling software for analysing demographics. Alteryx’s current core data analytics software platform was launched only in 2010, and a subscription model was introduced relatively recently in 2013. I see Alteryx’s long and winding journey to success as a sign of the founders’ ability to adapt and innovate.

I also credit Alteryx’s management with the success that the company has found in the land-and-expand strategy. The strategy starts with the company landing a customer with an initial use case, and then expanding its relationship with the customer through other use cases. The success can be illustrated through Alteryx’s impressive dollar-based net expansion rates (DBNERs). The metric is a very important gauge for the health of a SaaS (software-as-a-service) company’s business. It measures the change in revenue from all the company’s customers a year ago compared to today; it includes positive effects from upsells as well as negative effects from customers who leave or downgrade. Anything more than 100% indicates that the company’s customers, as a group, are spending more.

Alteryx’s DBNER has been more than 120% in each of the last 20 quarters – that’s five years! The chart below illustrates Alteryx’s DBNER going back to 2017’s first quarter.

Alteryx’s management has also led impressive customer-growth at the company. The company’s customer count has more than quadrupled from 1,398 at the end of 2015 to 6,087 at the end of 2019.

But there is a key area where Alteryx’s management falls short: The company’s culture. Alteryx has a 3.5-star rating on Glassdoor, and only 65% of reviewers will recommend Alteryx to friends. Stoecker only has an 85% approval rating as CEO. SAP, a competitor of Alteryx, has 4.5 stars on Glassdoor, and recommendation and CEO-approval ratings of 93% and 97%, respectively. Alteryx has managed to post impressive business-results despite its relatively poor culture, but I’m keeping an eye on things here.

4. Revenue streams that are recurring in nature, either through contracts or customer-behaviour

Alteryx’s business is built nearly entirely on subscriptions, which generate recurring revenue for the company. The company sells access to its data analytics platform through subscriptions, which typically range from one to three years. In 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016, more than 95% of Alteryx’s revenue in each year came from subscriptions to its platform; the rest of the revenue came from training and consulting services, among others. 

5. A proven ability to grow

There isn’t much historical financial data to study for Alteryx, since the company was listed only in March 2017. But I do like what I see.

A few key points to note:

• Alteryx has compounded its revenue at an impressive annual rate of 61.6% from 2014 to 2019. The astounding revenue growth of 92.7% in 2018 was partly the result of Alteryx adopting new accounting rules in the year. Alteryx’s revenue for 2018 would have been US$204.3 million after adjusting for the impact of the accounting rule, representing slower-but-still-impressive top-line growth of 55.2% for the year. 2019 saw the company maintain breakneck growth, with its revenue up by 64.8%.
• Alteryx started making a profit in 2018, and also generated positive operating cash flow and free cash flow in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
• Annual growth in operating cash flow and free cash flow from 2017 to 2019 was strong at 33.8% and 21.4%, respectively.
• The company’s balance sheet remained robust throughout the timeframe under study, with significantly more cash and investments than debt.
• At first glance, Alteryx’s diluted share count appeared to increase sharply by 22.1% from 2017 to 2018. But the number I’m using is the weighted average diluted share count. Right after Alteryx got listed in March 2017, it had a share count of around 57 million. This means that the increase in 2018 was milder (in the mid-teens range) though still higher than I would like it to be. The good news is that the diluted share count inched up by only 6% in 2019, which is acceptable, given the company’s rapid growth. I will be keeping an eye on Alteryx’s dilution.

6. A high likelihood of generating a strong and growing stream of free cash flow in the future

Alteryx has already started to generate free cash flow. Right now, the company has a poor trailing free cash flow margin (free cash flow as a percentage of revenue) of just 5.4%.

But over the long run, Alteryx expects to generate a strong free cash flow margin of 30% to 35%. I think this is a realistic and achievable target. There are other larger SaaS companies such as Adobe, salesforce.com, and Veeva Systems (my family’s portfolio owns shares in all three companies too) with a free cash flow margin around that range or higher.

Valuation

You should get some tissue ready… because Alteryx’s shares have a nosebleed valuation. At a share price of US$98, Alteryx carries a trailing price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 16.1. This P/S ratio is in the middle-range of where it has been since Alteryx’s IPO in March 2017 (see chart below). But the P/S ratio of 16.1 is still considered high. For perspective, if I assume that Alteryx has a 30% free cash flow margin today, then the company would have a price-to-free cash flow ratio of 54 based on the current P/S ratio (16.1 divided by 30%). 

But Alteryx also has a few strong positives going for it. The company has: (1) a huge addressable market in relation to its revenue; (2) a large and rapidly expanding customer base; and (3) very sticky customers who have been willing to significantly increase their spending with the company over time. I believe that with these traits, there’s a high chance that Alteryx will continue posting excellent revenue growth – and in turn, excellent free cash flow growth – in the years ahead.

The current high valuation for Alteryx does mean that its share price is likely going to be more volatile than the stock market as a whole (I’m also keeping in mind that stocks have been very volatile of late because of COVID-19 fears). But the potential volatility is something I’m very comfortable with.

The risks involved

I see a few key risks in Alteryx, with the high valuation being one. Besides introducing volatility (which I don’t see as a risk), Alteryx’s high valuation means that the market has high expectations for the company’s future growth. If Alteryx stumbles along the way, its share price will be punished. With COVID-19 causing widespread slowdowns in business activity across the world, there may be a global recession in the works. Should it happen, Alteryx may find it tough to grow its business.

Competition is another important risk. I mentioned earlier that Alteryx’s primary competitors are spreadsheets, or custom-built approaches. But the company’s data analytics platform is also competing against services from other technology heavyweights with much stronger financial resources, such as International Business Machines, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. Providers of data visualisation software, such as Tableau, could also decide to move upstream and budge into Alteryx’s space. To date, Alteryx has dealt with competition admirably – its quarterly DBNERs and growth in customer numbers are impressive. I’m watching these two metrics to observe how the company is faring against competitors.

Two other key risks deal with hacking and downtime in Alteryx’s services. The company’s platform is important for users, since it is used to crunch data to derive actionable insights; it is also likely that Alteryx’s platform is constantly fed with sensitive information of its users. Should there be a data breach on the platform, and/or if the platform stops working for extended periods of time, Alteryx could lose the confidence of its customers.

Then there’s also succession risk with Alteryx. Dean Stoecker, the company’s co-founder and CEO, is already 63. Should he step down in the future, I will keep an eye on the leadership transition.

Lastly, the following are all yellow-to-red flags for me regarding Alteryx: (1) The company’s DBNER comes in at less than 100% for an extended period of time; (2) it fails to increase its number of customers; and (3) it’s unable to convert revenue into free cash flow at a healthy clip in the future.

The Good Investors’ conclusion

Summing up Alteryx, it has:

1. A valuable self-service data analytics platform that addresses customers’ pain-points and is superior to legacy methods for data analysis;
2. high levels of recurring revenue;
3. outstanding revenue growth rates;
4. positive profit and free cash flow, with the potential for much higher free cash flow margins in the future;
5. a large and mostly untapped addressable market;
6. an impressive track record of winning customers and increasing their spending; and
7. capable leaders who are in the same boat as the company’s other shareholders

The company does have a premium valuation, so I’m taking on valuation risk. There are also other risks to note, such as tough competition and succession. But after analysing all the data on Alteryx’s pros and cons, I’m happy for my family’s portfolio to continue owning the company’s shares.

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