Splunk Inc. Announces Fiscal Second Quarter 2015 Financial Results

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK), provider of the leading software platform for real-time Operational Intelligence, today announced results for its fiscal second quarter ended July 31, 2014.

Second Quarter 2015 Financial Highlights

• Total revenues were $101.5 million, up 52% year-over-year.
• License revenues were $62.1 million, up 44% year-over-year.
• GAAP operating loss was $60.4 million; GAAP operating margin was negative 59.4%.
• Non-GAAP operating income was $1.6 million; non-GAAP operating margin was 1.6%.
• GAAP net loss per share was $0.51; non-GAAP net income per share was $0.01.
• Operating cash flow was $9.3 million with free cash flow of $6.4 million.

“We are pleased to deliver another strong quarter and thank our customers and partners for their continued support,” said Godfrey Sullivan, Chairman and CEO. “We continue to invest heavily in product innovation, including the industry’s first 100 percent uptime SLA for Splunk Cloud, we shipped a brand new product – the Splunk App for Stream for wire data – and delivered a new release of our App for Enterprise Security. I am also pleased to report the promotion of Haiyan Song to Senior Vice President, Security Markets.”

Second Quarter 2015 and Recent Business Highlights

Customers:

• Signed more than 500 new customers, ending the quarter with more than 7,900 customers worldwide.
• New and Expansion Customers Include: Banco BPI (Portugal), Bass Pro Shops, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Dell, Dropbox, Echo Entertainment (Australia), Equinix, GoodData, Itaú Unibanco (Brazil), Jefferies, La Poste (France), Milliken & Company, NASDAQ, Nordstrom, PCCW Limited (Hong Kong), Schneider Electric (France), SolarCity, State of Vermont, State Revenue Office Victoria (Australia), TELUS, UNE (Colombia), University of Washington and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Product:

• Announced the industry’s first 100 percent uptime service level agreement for Splunk Cloud and a free Splunk Online Sandbox to give customers a trial experience of Splunk Cloud within minutes.
• Announced the general availability (GA) of the Splunk App for Stream to capture real-time streaming wire data to support app management, IT operations, security and business analytics.
• Announced version 3.1 of the Splunk App for Enterprise Security that delivers a new risk scoring framework to enable easier, faster threat detection and containment by empowering users to assign risk scores to any data.
• Introduced the Splunk Mobile App, which allows users to receive real-time alerts and leverage Splunk Enterprise on the go through an optimized mobile user experience.

Partners:

• Announced a technical alliance with Syncsort to deliver machine data insights from mainframe systems.

Recognition:

• Named a leader in the Gartner 2014 Magic Quadrant for SIEM.
• Named to the SD Times 100 in Big Data and Business Intelligence.
• Named to Database Trends and Applications 100: The Companies that Matter Most in Data.
• Splunk customer Middlesex Hospital named to CIO 100 for use of Splunk software.
• Splunk customer UCAS awarded Public Sector Project of the Year by Computer Weekly for use of Splunk software.

Splunk4Good

• Launched eRegulations Insights, an open data analytics project that collects and analyzes information on public comments submitted through Regulations.gov.

Financial Outlook

The company is providing the following guidance for its fiscal third quarter 2015 (ending October 31, 2014):

• Total revenues are expected to be between $105 million and $107 million.
• Non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be approximately 1%.

The company is updating its previous guidance for its fiscal year 2015 (ending January 31, 2015):

• Total revenues are expected to be between $423 million and $428 million (was $402 million and $410 million per prior guidance provided on May 29, 2014).
• Non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be approximately 1% (was approximately zero per guidance provided on May 29, 2014).

All forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures contained in this section “Financial Outlook” exclude estimates for stock-based compensation expenses, employer payroll tax expense related to employee stock plans, amortization of acquired intangible assets and ground lease expense related to a build-to-suit lease obligation.

While a reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance measures to corresponding GAAP measures is not available on a forward-looking basis, the company has provided a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures in the financial statement tables for its fiscal second quarter 2015 and fiscal first half 2015 non-GAAP results included in this press release.

Conference Call and Webcast

Splunk’s executive management team will host a conference call today beginning at 1:30 p.m. PT (4:30 p.m. ET) to discuss the company’s financial results and business highlights. Interested parties may access the call by dialing (866) 501-1535. International parties may access the call by dialing (216) 672-5582. A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available through Splunk’s Investor Relations website at http://investors.splunk.com/events.cfm. A replay of the call will be available through September 4, 2014 by dialing (855) 859-2056 and referencing Conference ID 74665266.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding Splunk’s revenue and non-GAAP operating margin targets for the company’s fiscal third quarter and fiscal year 2015 in the paragraphs under “Financial Outlook” above and other statements regarding momentum in the company’s business, increasing customer adoption, expected quota carrier growth, expected success from product and service investments and innovations, expected benefits from new product offerings, expected profitability, growth strategies and growth in the number of new customers. There are a significant number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this press release, including: Splunk’s limited operating history and experience developing and introducing new products; risks associated with Splunk’s rapid growth, particularly outside of the U.S.; Splunk’s inability to realize value from its significant investments in its business, including product and service innovations; Splunk’s transition to a multi-product software and services business; Splunk’s inability to successfully integrate acquired businesses and technologies; and general market, political, economic and business conditions.

Additional information on potential factors that could affect Splunk’s financial results is included in the company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2014, which is on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Splunk does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

About Splunk Inc.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) provides the leading software platform for real-time Operational Intelligence. Splunk® software and cloud services enable organizations to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine-generated big data coming from websites, applications, servers, networks, sensors and mobile devices. More than 7,900 enterprises, government agencies, universities and service providers in 100 countries use Splunk software to deepen business and customer understanding, mitigate cybersecurity risk, prevent fraud, improve service performance and reduce cost. Splunk products include Splunk® Enterprise, Splunk Cloud™, Splunk Storm®, Hunk™ and premium Splunk Apps. To learn more, please visit http://www.splunk.com/company.

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Splunk, Splunk>, Listen to Your Data, The Engine for Machine Data, Hunk, Splunk Cloud, Splunk Storm and SPL are trademarks and registered trademarks of Splunk Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective owners. © 2014 Splunk Inc. All rights reserved.

SPLUNK INC.

Non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations

To supplement Splunk’s consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”), Splunk provides investors with certain non-GAAP financial measures, including non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP operating income (loss), non-GAAP net income (loss), non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP net income (loss) per share (collectively the “non-GAAP financial measures”). These non-GAAP financial measures exclude all or a combination of the following (as reflected in the following reconciliation table): stock-based compensation expense, employer payroll tax expense related to employee stock plans, amortization of acquired intangible assets and ground lease expense related to a build-to-suit lease obligation. In addition, non-GAAP financial measures include free cash flow, which represents cash from operations less purchases of property and equipment. The presentation of the non-GAAP financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. Splunk uses these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision-making purposes and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Splunk believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information about Splunk’s operating results, enhance the overall understanding of past financial performance and future prospects and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision making. In addition, these non-GAAP financial measures facilitate comparisons to competitors’ operating results.

Splunk excludes stock-based compensation expense because it is non-cash in nature and excluding this expense provides meaningful supplemental information regarding Splunk’s operational performance. In particular, because of varying available valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types that companies can use under FASB ASC Topic 718, Splunk believes that providing non-GAAP financial measures that exclude this expense allows investors the ability to make more meaningful comparisons between Splunk’s operating results and those of other companies. Splunk excludes employer payroll tax expense related to employee stock plans in order for investors to see the full effect that excluding that stock-based compensation expense had on Splunk’s operating results. These expenses are tied to the exercise or vesting of underlying equity awards and the price of Splunk’s common stock at the time of vesting or exercise, which may vary from period to period independent of the operating performance of Splunk’s business. Splunk excludes amortization of acquired intangible assets from its non-GAAP financial measures because it is considered by management to be outside of Splunk’s core operating results. Splunk further excludes the ground lease expense related to its build-to-suit lease obligation from its non-GAAP operating income (loss), non-GAAP operating margin and non-GAAP net income (loss) because it is also considered by management to be outside of Splunk’s core operating results. Accordingly, Splunk believes that excluding these expenses provides investors and management with greater visibility to the underlying performance of its business operations, facilitates comparison of its results with other periods and may also facilitate comparison with the results of other companies in its industry. Splunk considers free cash flow to be a liquidity measure that provides useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated by the business that can be used for strategic opportunities, including investing in its business, making strategic acquisitions and strengthening its balance sheet.

There are limitations in using non-GAAP financial measures because the non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with GAAP, may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by Splunk’s competitors and exclude expenses that may have a material impact upon Splunk’s reported financial results. Further, stock-based compensation expense has been and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a significant recurring expense in Splunk’s business and an important part of the compensation provided to Splunk’s employees. The non-GAAP financial measures are meant to supplement and be viewed in conjunction with GAAP financial measures.

The following table reconciles Splunk’s non-GAAP results to Splunk’s GAAP results included in this press release.