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Pure Storage ( PSTG ) received an upbeat review ahead of its first-quarter earnings report next week, with an analyst saying the flash storage market appears to be growing faster than expected. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brent Bracelin said Pure Storage appears to be gaining market share at the expense of legacy storage vendors including IBM ( IBM ), NetApp ( NTAP ) and EMC, which Dell is acquiring. “Reseller and partner feedback during March and April suggests demand for flash remains strong, particularly for Pure Storage,” Bracelin wrote in a research note. Pure Storage makes storage products based on flash chips, designed for the business enterprise market. Flash-based storage arrays are much faster than disk-drive storage systems but generally come at a higher price. Flash is seen as the future of storage, with that transition well underway but still in the early stages. The vast majority of the storage spend is still with the largest incumbents, including NetApp, IBM and EMC. Pure Storage is growing fast, but it’s still incurring large losses. Pure Storage continues to invest heavily to support a business model that is on pace to quickly scale to a $1 billion run-rate within five years after shipping its first product, Bracelin wrote. The company has $604 million in cash and no debt, and it remains on track to reach positive cash flow by the end of 2018, he said. “We estimate Pure’s revenue could grow by 60%-plus this year, driven by flash share gains,” Bracelin wrote. Pure Storage is set to report earnings after the market close Wednesday, for its fiscal Q1 ended April 30. The Wall Street consensus estimate on revenue is $138 million, up 86% year over year. The bottom-line consensus, as polled by Thomson Reuters, is for a per-share loss minus items of 23 cents, vs. a 26-cent loss in the year-earlier quarter. Pacific Crest continues to rate Pure Storage stock overweight, or buy, “based on the promising potential to build a next-generation storage franchise, strong balance sheet with over $600 million in cash, and the longer-term profit potential,” Bracelin wrote. Bracelin has a price target on Pure Storage stock of 24. The company came public in October 2015, raising $425 million with an initial public offering that priced 25 million shares at 17. Pure Storage stock was near 14.50, up 1%, in afternoon trading in the stock market today . Scalper1 News
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