Daily queries growth of 63% and 131% Net Revenue Retention at the low end of the (non AI) cycle show just how much they sandbagged guidance of 22%. Both lead to future revenue growth. For comparison, they just achieved 36% annual revenue growth with daily queries growth of 73% and 158% NRR as the cycle was trending down. Now the cycle is about to trend up. I'd be surprised if revenue growth is lower than 27% this year.
The new CEO Sridhar Ramasway is better than Slootman in every way. Slootman was a has-been-MBA-suit cashing in on his cachet like John Chen at BlackBerry. Took extreme stock based comp for himself and kept selling shares nonstop, while not keeping up with industry competition. Tech expertise is essential for tech CEOs to lead their companies to a monopolistic outcome. Research on the economics of tires (Slootman), not so much.
The company is about to become relevant in the AI space due to this change in leadership. And web services companies are probably the biggest long term beneficiaries of AI. They have better economics (network, scale, incremental capital requirements). The new CEO expects several new product launches this year and he delivered one yesterday. That's impressive after a little over one month on the job.
By now everyone knows the CEO bought $5m worth of shares as part of his compensation contract this week. However, what's actually more interesting is Mark D. McLaughlin bought $501k worth of stock above $165 this month without being required to do so as part of any agreement. He similarly added $300k early last year at a higher price. He's a director of Snowflake and Palo Alto Networks, and Chairman of Qualcomm. Definitely the kind of guy who has his finger on the pulse of the tech scene. So if he's buying more this year than last year at the same price, he is more confident in the company's future now.
The Snowflake selloff seems like it is a temporary accident because the company is widely analyzed.
