With earnings season in full swing, ETR highlights data reviews for CrowdStrike, Okta, Snowflake, Workday, and Zscaler. The data cited in this article is from ETR's October 2023 Technology Spending Intentions Survey (TSIS). We review each name in order of their expected earnings date, beginning with Workday.
Workday. The Financial Management data has seen a notable decline in ETR's final 2023 survey, driven by more plans to spend flat and/or decrease spend. For context, 14.6% of Workday Financial Management customers plan to spend negatively (versus 10% in July '23 and 7.9% in October '22), while 22% of customers plan to increase spend, down from 34% this time last year. When filtering to Global 2000 organizations who are customers of Workday Financial Management (N=66) this trend is even more apparent compared to three months ago as negativity reaches 18% of accounts and expansion rates drop to 20%.
Within HCM, the data also shows a modest decline (36% Net Score down slightly from 40%); this is less concerning, however, as 'Flat' indications are driving this modest decline in Net Score (as opposed to Decrease/Replacing indications). On an absolute basis, Workday HCM remains the 5th highest Net Score in the Enterprise Apps sector, trailing only ServiceNow, SAP S/4HANA, Microsoft Viva, and Salesforce.
Workday stock has had an impressive run, up nearly 40% year to date. The company is expected to report earnings on November 27th.
Zscaler. Zscaler’s Net Score across all respondents is stable s/s and y/y as expansion rates remain healthy (37%) and churn remains minimal. Planned adoption rates are below 2H20 and 2H21 levels but remain strong and in-line with 2H22 data. Comparing Zscaler’s aggregate Net Score to peers in Information Security, the vendor shows more resiliency on a y/y basis amidst a difficult broader backdrop; Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Fortinet are all seeing a larger y/y decline in overall Net Score.
When focusing on Global 2000 organizations, Zscaler sees stronger expansion rates (42%) and minimal negativity, continuing its strength in ETR’s survey among large enterprises. The vendor is leading many sector peers, including Palo Alto Networks in Net Score among Global 2000 accounts. Pervasion gains continue among Global 2000 and Fortune 500 organizations as Zscaler continues to grow its customer count in ETR’s sample. In sum, continued strength in large enterprise accounts and strong sector positioning keep us Positive on Zscaler’s OCT23 dataset, despite some weakness among Mid & Small customers.
Zscaler is expected to report earnings on December 1st. We shall see if the stock can continue its incredible run that has seen shares double in the last six months!
CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike’s aggregate Net Score is softening versus JUL23 and OCT22 data due to a smaller portion of ‘Increase’ responses, yet expansion rates remain healthy at absolute levels; 38% of customers plan to increase spend in 2H23 compared to 45% in 2H22. Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks are seeing similar y/y Net Score revisions across all respondents; Zscaler shows more stability, and SentinelOne shows a slight improvement (albeit off weaker 2H22 data). Although expansion rates have slightly cooled for CrowdStrike, the vendor continues to see one of the highest percentages of positive spend plans across all InfoSec vendors. Further, this is alleviated by strong customer acquisition rates (i.e., new planned adoptions for CrowdStrike).
From a competitive standpoint, Cylance, Symantec, and Trellix remain poorly positioned in shared accounts as organizations using CrowdStrike continue to lower spend with these products. Conversely, Microsoft, Zscaler, and Palo Alto Networks remain well-positioned among organizations using CrowdStrike. If you would like to see more detailed data and research for Crowdstrike and its competitive peers keep an eye out for the upcoming ETR Observatory for Endpoint Protection Platforms, featuring the debut of ETR's Market Array data. The report will be released on Monday, November 20th here.
CrowdStrike is expected to report earnings on November 29th and will attempt to continue its momentum that has seen shares nearly double (95% increase) this year.
Okta. In the JAN23 survey, ETR caught an inflection point on the then-beleaguered Okta and placed a positive outlook on the company’s data set. Fast forward to the JUL23 survey period, and the aggregate Net Score for Okta and Auth0 was extremely elevated, reaffirming ETR’s positioning. This time around, the most recent OCT23 survey caught another inflection lower. The combined Net Score across all respondents for Okta and Auth0 now sits at 36% for the OCT23 survey period, a sizeable drop from the 46% level from the last survey and lower than the 39% recorded last year. In fact, the current Net Score is a new all-time low for the combined entity.
When isolating Global 2000 respondents, which account for 25% of the vendor’s total citations in this survey, Net Score is 46%, down sequentially from 51% but still materially higher than all-time lows of 37% captured last year and very healthy overall. Meanwhile, Pervasion among this group has flattened over the last two surveys but remains robust at north of 30%. Large organizations as a whole dropped from 47% to 39%, and the biggest falloff came from the more budget-conscious Midsize organizations (~20% of total citations), plummeting from 40% to 25%. The drop among that cohort is particularly troubling given ETR’s Replacement reasoning and Insights commentary surfacing concerns around the vendor’s cost and pricing.
The vendor’s adoption rate dropped from 14% to 11%, and the Replacement and Decrease rate both crept higher, so we reviewed ETR’s reasoning data to see that while Product Technical Capabilities and Feature Breadth are the most frequently cited reasons for adopting an Okta product, Product Cost / ROI is by far the most frequently cited reason for replacing an Okta product. However, the rise of Security as a replacement reason is something to take note of following the vendor’s high-profile breaches. It should be noted that this data was collected PRIOR to Okta's most recent security breach, so we eagerly await the JAN23 TSIS data to see how these trends may change. In the meantime, the ETR Insights team will be hosting a Panel of four security IT decision makers next week to examine the possible end-user implications of the latest breach. A full replay of the research panel and an accompanying executive report of the key findings will be available for ETR clients. Request your access here.
Okta is expected to report earnings on November 30th. Following news of the vendor's latest security breach, the stock has fallen and now lies at relatively flat levels year-to-date.
Snowflake. Net Score has declined for the seventh consecutive survey, as more customers plan to spend 'Flat' in 2H23 compared to the levels seen in 2H22. In addition to this flattening in spend, it is also interesting to see plans to 'Decrease' spend surfacing in the dataset, as 8.2% of customers plan to reduce spend with Snowflake compared to 4.1% one year ago. Nonetheless, customer acquisition rates remain elevated for Snowflake, as Adoption % is the highest across all Database / Data Warehousing vendors in ETR's survey (minimum N=40), and churn remains minimal (3.2%). Further, Snowpark made a strong debut in ETR's July '23 survey with a 43.3% Net Score that improved to 45.6% in October '23.
When we compare spending intentions to Databricks, we see stronger expansion rates for Snowflake's competitor in Global 2000 accounts: 55.3% of Databricks customers plan to increase spend (up Y/Y from 51.4%), compared to 39.4% for Snowflake (down Y/Y from 54.1%). While both vendors remain well positioned on an absolute basis vs. all Database / Data Warehousing peers, we've seen recent momentum for Databricks in ETR's 2H23 surveys, and we'll continue to monitor this trend as CY 2024 data is collected in the coming weeks.
Snowflake is expected to report earnings on November 30th and has had a somewhat volatile year, trading between $120 and $180; however, on a year-to-date basis, the stock is now about 13% higher.
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Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) is a technology market research firm that leverages proprietary data from our targeted IT decision maker (ITDM) community to provide actionable insights about spending intentions and industry trends. Since 2010, we have worked diligently at achieving one goal: eliminating the need for opinions in enterprise research, which are often formed from incomplete, biased, and statistically insignificant data. Our community of ITDMs represents $1+ trillion in annual IT spend and is positioned to provide best-in-class customer/evaluator perspectives. ETR’s proprietary data and insights from this community empower institutional investors, technology companies, and ITDMs to navigate the complex enterprise technology landscape amid an expanding marketplace. Discover what ETR can do for you at www.etr.ai