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The end of the earnings season is always a good time to take a step back and see who shined (and who not so much). Let’s take a look at how data analytics stocks fared in Q2, starting with MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR).
Organizations generate a lot of data that is stored in silos, often in incompatible formats, making it slow and costly to extract actionable insights, which in turn drives demand for modern cloud-based data analysis platforms that can efficiently analyze the siloed data.
The 6 data analytics stocks we track reported a satisfactory Q2. As a group, revenues beat analysts’ consensus estimates by 0.7% while next quarter’s revenue guidance was in line.
Big picture, the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of inflation and employment. The former had been running hot throughout 2021 and 2022 but cooled towards the central bank's 2% target as of late. This prompted the Fed to cut its policy rate by 50bps (half a percent) in September 2024. Given recent employment data that suggests the US economy could be wobbling, the markets will be assessing whether this rate and future cuts (the Fed signaled more to come in 2024 and 2025) are the right moves at the right time or whether they're too little, too late for a macro that has already cooled.
Luckily, data analytics stocks have performed well with share prices up 32.5% on average since the latest earnings results.
Weakest Q2: MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR)
Founded in 1989 with an initial contract with DuPoint, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) started as a data mining and business intelligence software platform, but in 2020, the company made waves by investing heavily in Bitcoin.
MicroStrategy reported revenues of $111.4 million, down 7.4% year on year. This print fell short of analysts’ expectations by 8.6%. Overall, it was a disappointing quarter for the company with a miss of analysts’ EBITDA and billings estimates.
“After yet another successful quarter for our bitcoin strategy, MicroStrategy today holds 226,500 bitcoins reflecting a current market value 70% higher than our cost basis. We remain laser focused on our Bitcoin development strategy and intend to continue to achieve positive “BTC Yield,” which is a new KPI that we are introducing, targeting 4-8% annually, over each of the next three years.
MicroStrategy delivered the weakest performance against analyst estimates and slowest revenue growth of the whole group. Interestingly, the stock is up 40.7% since reporting and currently trades at $212.75.
Read our full report on MicroStrategy here, it’s free.
Best Q2: Palantir (NYSE:PLTR)
Started by Peter Thiel after seeing US defence agencies struggle in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) offers software as a service platform that helps government agencies and large enterprises use data to make better decisions.