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Workday Inc. shares jumped more than 10% and headed toward their highest prices in more than a year in after-hours trading Thursday, after the software company easily topped earnings expectations and brought on a new chief financial officer.
Workday
WDAY,
reported a fiscal first-quarter profit of $136,000, less than a penny a share, on revenue of $1.68 billion, up from $1.44 billion a year ago. After adjusting for stock compensation and other effects, the cloud-software company reported earnings of $1.31 a share, up from adjusted earnings of 83 cents a share in the same period last year.
Analysts on average expected adjusted earnings of $1.12 a share on sales of $1.67 billion, according to FactSet. Workday shares closed with a 0.1% gain at $196.41, then topped $217 in the extended session; the stock’s 52-week high is $206.68, according to FactSet.
“Workday had a strong first quarter, underscoring the value proposition of the full Workday platform combined with our unique approach to artificial intelligence and machine learning,” co-Chief Executive Aneel Bhusri said in a statement.
Workday also seemed to confirm analysts’ expectations for the second quarter, offering guidance that slightly exceeded analysts’ average forecast for subscription revenue of $1.61 billion. Chief Financial Officer Barbara Larson detailed that bit of information and some other guidance in a statement; Workday typically provides full guidance in its conference call, which is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Eastern.
“Given these results, we are raising the low end of our fiscal 2024 subscription-revenue guidance to a range of $6.550 billion to $6.575 billion, representing 18% growth over the prior fiscal year,” Larson said in her statement. “We expect second-quarter subscription revenue to be $1.611 billion to $1.613 billion, also 18% growth. In addition, we are maintaining our fiscal 2024 non-GAAP operating margin guidance of 23%, as we drive a balance of both growth and margin expansion.”
Workday also announced that Larson will step aside as CFO and be replaced by Zane Rowe, who was most recently CFO at VMware Inc.
VMW,
and had previously served in that position for EMC and United Airlines Holdings Inc.
UAL,
The appointment will be effective June 12.
Workday stock has increased 19.4% in the past year, as the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has gained 3.4%.
