Dynatrace (NYSE:DT) Q4 Sales Beat Estimates, Provides Optimistic Full Year Guidance

Application performance monitoring software provider Dynatrace (NYSE:DT) reported Q4 FY2023 results topping analyst expectations, with revenue up 24.5% year on year to $314.5 million. Guidance for next quarter's revenue was $326.5 million at the midpoint, 2.43% above the average of analyst estimates. Dynatrace made a GAAP profit of $80.3 million, improving on its profit of $929 thousand, in the same quarter last year.

Founded in Austria in 2005, Dynatrace (NYSE:DT) provides companies with software that allows them to monitor the performance of their full technology stack, from software applications to the infrastructure they run on.

Dynatrace is essentially a monitoring system that aims to detect performance issues in a company's technology (for example, their booking systems) before inefficiencies or bottlenecks end up impacting customers. It can use artificial intelligence to automatically identify (or at least guess at) the root cause of a problem. On top of that, Dynatrace can help automate mitigation procedures where necessary, ensuring a timely reaction to any problem.

Dynatrace was acquired by Compuware the same year it was founded. In 2014, it gained its independence again, under the leadership of John van Siclen, its previous and subsequent CEO.

Dynatrace gives engineers visibility across the whole computing environment, whether cloud or on-premise, and allows them to see how everything is connected. This also allows an AI engine to provide causation-based answers and proactive, actionable insights.

Software is eating the world, increasing organizations’ reliance on digital-only solutions. As more workloads and applications move to the cloud, the reliability of the underlying cloud infrastructure becomes ever more critical, and ever more complex. To solve the challenge, companies and their engineering teams have turned to a range of cloud monitoring tools that provide them with visibility to troubleshoot the issues in real time.

Dynatrace faces a number of competitors in the performance monitoring space, both large corporations, such as Datadog (NASDAQ:DDOG), Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK), New Relic (NYSE:NEWR) and up and coming startups, such as Better Stack.

Sales Growth

As you can see below, Dynatrace's revenue growth has been strong over the last two years, growing from quarterly revenue of $196.5 million in Q4 FY2021, to $314.5 million.

This quarter, Dynatrace's quarterly revenue was once again up a very solid 24.5% year on year. Quarter on quarter the revenue increased by $17 million in Q4, which was in line with Q3 2023. This steady quarter-on-quarter growth shows the company is able to maintain its steady growth trajectory.

Guidance for the next quarter indicates Dynatrace is expecting revenue to grow 22.2% year on year to $326.5 million, slowing down from the 27.4% year-over-year increase in revenue the company had recorded in the same quarter last year. For the upcoming financial year management expects revenue to be $1.4 billion at the midpoint, growing 20.6% compared to 24.6% increase in FY2023.

Profitability

What makes the software as a service business so attractive is that once the software is developed, it typically shouldn't cost much to provide it as an ongoing service to customers. Dynatrace's gross profit margin, an important metric measuring how much money there is left after paying for servers, licenses, technical support and other necessary running expenses was at 81.1% in Q4.

That means that for every $1 in revenue the company had $0.81 left to spend on developing new products, marketing & sales and the general administrative overhead. Despite the recent drop that is still a great gross margin, that allows companies like Dynatrace to fund large investments in product and sales during periods of rapid growth and be profitable when they reach maturity.

Cash Is King

If you have followed StockStory for a while, you know that we put an emphasis on cash flow. Why, you ask? We believe that in the end cash is king, as you can't use accounting profits to pay the bills. Dynatrace's free cash flow came in at $114.5 million in Q4, up 39% year on year.

Dynatrace has generated $333.3 million in free cash flow over the last twelve months, an impressive 28.8% of revenues. This robust FCF margin is a result of Dynatrace asset lite business model, scale advantages, and strong competitive positioning, and provides it the option to return capital to shareholders while still having plenty of cash to invest in the business.

Key Takeaways from Dynatrace's Q4 Results

With a market capitalization of $13.5 billion, more than $555.3 million in cash and with free cash flow over the last twelve months being positive, the company is in a very strong position to invest in growth.

It was positive to see Dynatrace's solid revenue guidance for the full year. And we were also glad that the revenue guidance for the next quarter exceeded analysts' expectations. On the other hand, there was a deterioration in gross margin. Overall, we think this was still a really good quarter, that should leave shareholders feeling very positive. The company is up 4.63% on the results and currently trades at $49 per share.

Is Now The Time?

Dynatrace may have had a good quarter, but investors should also consider its valuation and business qualities, when assessing the investment opportunity. We think Dynatrace is a solid business. We would expect growth rates to moderate from here, but its revenue growth has been solid, over the last two years. On top of that, its impressive gross margins are indicative of excellent business economics, and its bountiful generation of free cash flow empowers it to invest in growth initiatives.

Dynatrace's price to sales ratio based on the next twelve months of 10.1x indicates that the market is certainly optimistic about its growth prospects. There are definitely things to like about Dynatrace and looking at the tech landscape right now, it seems that it doesn't trade at an unreasonable price point.

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