Workday Inc. shares rallied in the extended session Monday after the human-resources cloud-software company beat estimates for the quarter and forecast a subscription revenue range that exceeded the Wall Street consensus.
Workday
WDAY,
+1.70%
stock surged nearly 8% after hours, following a 1.7% gain in the regular session to close at $229.05.
The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $73.3 million, or 29 cents a share, compared with a loss of $71.7 million, or 30 cents a share, in the year-ago period.
Adjusted earnings, which exclude stock-based compensation expenses and other items, were 78 cents a share, compared with 73 cents a share in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose to $1.38 billion from $1.13 billion in the year-ago quarter, while subscription revenue rose 22% to $1.23 billion from a year ago.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast 71 cents a share on revenue of $1.36 billion and subscription revenue of $1.22 billion.
“Given the strength in our fourth quarter and our optimism that the environment will remain robust for finance and HR transformation initiatives, we are raising our guidance for fiscal 2023 subscription revenue to be in a range of $5.53 billion to $5.55 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 22%,” said Barbara Larson, Workday chief financial officer, in a statement.
Analysts forecast subscription revenue of $5.46 billion for the year.
Workday shares are down 6.6% over the past 12 months, while the First Trust Cloud Computing ETF
SKYY,
+0.65%
is down 13.3% and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF
IGV,
+0.98%
is down 3.6%. Meanwhile the S&P 500 index
SPX,
-0.24%
is up 14.8%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
+0.41%
is up 4.2%.
