Nutanix Stock Has Been Soaring After ‘New Company’ Emerges

Nutanix stock has surged more than 25 percent since Wednesday after the cloud computing specialist provided preliminary revenue projections of $315 million for its third fiscal quarter.

Nutanix’s stock increased from $17.77 per share on May 5 at market close to $22.23 per share as of Thursday afternoon, representing a 25.1 percent share increase in less than 48 hours.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company yesterday revealed preliminary revenue expectations in its third fiscal quarter, which ended April 30, to be between $312 million and $317 million, up approximately 9 percent year over year.

“A new company will emerge from this pandemic, and this quarter is just the beginning of that,” said Nutanix founder and CEO Dheeraj Pandey on Wednesday. “The recessionary macro environment makes our subscription transformation and our delightful zero-touch products even more impactful, as we enable our customers to be resilient, prepared and productive.”

[Related: Nutanix Confirms Furloughs Of Nearly 1,500 Employees]

Nutanix is projecting software and support sales of $310 million for its third quarter, representing an increase of around 17 percent year over year, in line with prior guidance. Nutanix software and support billing is expected to be in the range of $365 million to $385 million in the third quarter, up approximately 15 percent year over year.

Pandey said Nutanix has seen an “emerging tailwind” around virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop as-a-Service (DaaS) in its third fiscal quarter. “Corporate initiatives around remote work, hands-free IT automation, disaster recovery, and lift-and-shift to public cloud data centers will be some of the pillars of digital transformation, and we believe we will be at the center of these conversations,” he said.

Tim Joyce, president and CEO of Roundstone Solutions, an Orinda-Calif.-based Nutanix partner, said his company is leveraging Nutanix to help customers stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We have two customers that had to add many users to their VDI environment in order to work from home,” said Joyce. “With so many more users, they needed help around what additions they need for their existing Nutanix cluster. Because Nutanix is so efficient, all they each needed to do was add more RAM, which we have done. The customers, and their users, are now happy.”

The release of its third quarter preliminary results came just one day after Nutanix confirmed to CRN it is furloughing a total of 1,465 employees in California, representing approximately 25 percent of the company’s worldwide headcount, due to uncertain business conditions stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. Nutanix is implementing two separate one-week unpaid furloughs that will occur on a rolling basis effective May 4 through July 26, followed by another round from Aug. 3 through Oct. 31.

Nutanix stock hit an all-time high of nearly $62 per share in June 2018. The company’s stock fell significantly in late February and into March following its second fiscal quarter earnings report and the stock market fallout due to the coronavirus pandemic.