Trading update and Outlook

RNS Number : 3891A

WANdisco Plc

02 February 2022

 

2 February 2022

WANdisco plc

("WANdisco" or the "Company")

Trading update and Outlook

· Strong momentum in Q4 through direct wins and key channel partners

· High visibility of near-term pipeline underpins confidence in strong FY22 trading

WANdisco (WAND.L), the LiveData company, announces a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2021 ("FY21").

Trading Update

The Company saw strong trading in Q4, following significant contract wins both directly and with its key cloud channel partners including Azure, AWS and IBM, as well as its principal analytics partners Databricks and Snowflake. As a result, the Company's preliminary unaudited revenues are expected to be in-line with current market estimates, upgraded in December 2021. Q4 bookings increased 30% to $8.4m from $6.5m in Q4 2020. For FY21, bookings increased 17% to $11.9m from $10.2m in the prior period. Ending RPO¹ (Remaining Performance Obligations), is expected to be approximately $9.4m for FY21, up 92% year on year.

Toward the end of FY21, the Company took steps to realise efficiencies in its business model through prudent sales reorganisation and effective cost management. The Company has a strong balance sheet, with WANdisco's year-end cash position expected to be approximately $27.8m, a 32% increase on the prior year, with $1.2m in trade receivables.

In the last year, the business has made steady progress in its transition to a cloud-centric, consumption-based model, resulting in more predictable revenues (unbilled backlog, or RPO), reduced discounting (metered pricing) and increased upsell opportunities. The cloud platform model of the "Commit to Consume" contract structure, where a customer is obligated to move a minimum amount of data over a given time, is now the standard for WANdisco. This helped drive strong RPO and bookings growth in H2 2021 as WANdisco benefits from a stream of committed revenues that have the potential to increase as customers' data needs expand.

This successful transition has also allowed WANdisco to deepen its strategic relationships with key partners including Oracle. The Company recently announced that Oracle will provide fully funded access to WANdisco's LiveData Migrator solution to support its enterprise customers and partners in accelerating data lake migrations to the cloud. Oracle has a large, defined pipeline of opportunities driven by its cloud services business.

The General Availability of the LiveData Platform for Azure was successfully launched in H2 2021.  The announcement signified the completion of a multi-year joint project with Microsoft to integrate WANdisco's technology into its cloud fabric and unlock the Azure ecosystem for global blue-chips - one of the most important initiatives in WANdisco's history to date.

Outlook

Looking ahead, the high visibility of WANdisco's near term business pipeline underpins confidence in a strong trading performance in 2022. The Company sees significant market opportunities in IoT-driven deals and expansion into new verticals in the coming year.

David Richards, CEO and Chairman of WANdisco, commented:

"The WANdisco team has worked incredibly hard to lay the groundwork for a significant acceleration in new customer wins through an effective restructuring of our sales organisation. We are now seeing the benefit of this labour as we look to secure larger deals, in new markets through our growing, market leading product portfolio.

"The new contract wins we saw in Q4 directly and through key industry partners are testament to the strategic progress we have achieved across the business this year, while the General Availability of the LiveData Platform for Azure - announced in October 2021 - was a critical step in converting WANdisco's new business pipeline. 

"We are excited by the opportunities we are seeing in the market to enter new verticals and are well placed to capitalise on an expected increase in IoT-driven deals this year. Q4 saw a significant increase in bookings and RPO and this momentum, combined with high near-term visibility, gives us confidence in our ability to execute on the Company's strong Q1 and H1 2022 pipeline".

Footnotes

1)  RPO is defined as committed unbilled backlog plus deferred revenue.

ENDS

For further information, please contact: WANdisco plc	via FTI Consulting
David Richards, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
Erik Miller, Chief Financial Officer
FTI Consulting	[phone]
Matt Dixon / Kwaku Aning / Tom Blundell
Stifel (Nomad and Joint Broker)	[phone]
Fred Walsh / Richard Short
Panmure Gordon (Joint Broker) Erik Anderson / Alina Vaskina	[phone]

Note: This announcement contains inside information which is disclosed in accordance with the Market Abuse Regulation (No 596/2014).  The person responsible for this announcement is Erik Miller, CFO.

About WANdisco

WANdisco is the LiveData company. WANdisco's LiveData Cloud Services enable enterprises to create an environment where data is always available, accurate and protected, creating a strong backbone for their IT infrastructure and a bedrock for running consistent, accurate machine learning applications. With zero downtime and zero data loss, WANdisco LiveData Platform keeps geographically dispersed data at any scale consistent between on-premises and cloud environments allowing businesses to operate seamlessly in a hybrid or multi-cloud environment. For more information on WANdisco, visit www.wandisco.com .

 

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