By Senad Karaahmetovic
Shares of Asana (NYSE:ASAN) are up by almost 20% in premarket Thursday after the software company reported strong Q2 results and offered an upbeat forecast for the third quarter.
Asana reported a loss per share of $0.34 on revenue of $134.9 million, which is better than the consensus that was looking for a loss per share of $0.39 on revenue of $127.27 million.
"Growth was driven by large enterprise deals and momentum in the US, with the number of customers spending $100,000 or more on an annualized basis up 105 percent," the company said in a press release.
For this quarter, Asana sees a loss per share in the range of $0.33 to $0.32, somewhere in line with the consensus of a loss per share of $0.32. Revenue is seen between $138.5 and $139.5 million, modestly ahead of the consensus of $137.6 million.
An Oppenheimer analyst said the results were strong while the balance sheet is "reinforced" following a $350 million private placement by CEO Dustin Moskovitz.
"We're comfortable with management's ability to execute to this target, though caution that meaningful operating leverage improvement is still several quarters away into FY24. Maintain Outperform on the strong upmarket/ expansion being shown and growth drivers in place (users/use cases/upsell)," the analyst said in a note.
An RBC analyst hiked the price target to $15 from $13, although he reflected in a less positive manner than the Oppenheimer analyst.
"Stepping back, immediate cash worries are set aside (at least for now) although we view CY24 FCF target as aggressive and see heightened potential for disruption/deceleration. We remain UP on competition, opportunity, macro worries, and NT disruption from shifts in GTM and margin profile," the analyst said in a client note.