Atlassian’s quarterly sales are up 24%, but last year’s profit has turned into a $240 million loss
Atlassian’s March quarterly revenue is up 24% from 12 months ago to $915 million (A$1.365 billion), while subscription revenue is up 37% to $761 million (A$1.136 billion), but earnings from US$32.9 million last year has turned into an operating loss of US$161.6 million (A$240 million) for Q3 in FY2023.
The US-listed (NASDAQ: TEAM) Australian workplace software giant reported its quarterly results this morning and posted a net loss of US$209 million for the quarter, compared to a net profit of $4.7 million for the same period last year. The loss includes restructuring costs and income taxes totaling $139.5 million.
In March, the company announced it would cut headcount by about 5% of its workforce, some 500 employees, in what co-CEOs Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes described as a “rebalancing” of the company. At the time, the layoffs were predicted to cost approximately US$70-75 million (A$105-112 million), including US$27-29 million in severance payments and benefits.
In their quarterly shareholder letterFarquhar and Cannon-Brookes said there are “huge growth opportunities ahead of us,” including cloud migrations, ITSM and serving enterprise customers in the cloud.
“Our unique business model allows us to act quickly as new technologies emerge. When advances in generative AI came on the scene early this year, we already had years of experience building AI-powered features,” they said.
“Now we can combine large language models (LLMs) with our existing machine learning models and deliver results tailored to the customer’s context to create entirely new, hyper-customized experiences.”
Atlassian Intelligence was announced last month at the company’s annual Team 23 conference. It is a virtual teammate built on its machine learning models and technology from OpenAI that creates, summarizes and extracts information from a customer’s content in its products.
“With more than 20 years of knowledge reflecting how hundreds of thousands of software, IT and business teams plan, track and deliver work, Atlassian Intelligence has a unique understanding of teamwork. We are beyond excited about AI’s ability to unlock the potential of our customers and enhance our competitive advantage,” said Cannon-Brookes.
His co-founder Scott Farquar said the company had a solid quarter with its financial results beating their revenue expectations
“Our customers turn to Atlassian for help transforming the way work gets done and we are incredibly excited about the significant opportunities ahead,” he said.
“We’ve made tough decisions and now, looking ahead, we’re laser-focused on execution to accelerate our biggest growth opportunities and strategic initiatives.”
Cash and cash equivalents plus marketable securities totaled $2 billion at the end of the third quarter.
Operating income grew nearly $20 million to $197.1 million for the third quarter, compared to an operating income of $177.4 million 12 months ago, but Atlassian’s operating margin fell 2% this quarter to 22% compared by 24% by 2022.
Cash flow from operations was $352.4 million and free cash flow was $349.7 million for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023. The total number of active customer subscriptions or maintenance agreements grew by 6,598 to 259,775 customers during the quarter.
Atlassian forecasts fourth quarter revenue of between $900 million and $920 million. For the quarter, an operating margin loss of 11% on a GAAP basis is expected.
