Nutanix (NTNX)

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Nutanix Is Still In 'Hyper Growth Mode,' What To Expect Over The Coming Quarters

Jayson Derrick , Benzinga Staff Writer FOLLOW
September 18, 2017 2:41pm Comments

Bank of America's Wamsi Mohan met with some of Nutanix Inc's most senior executives, including chief financial officer, Duston Williams, and head of investor relations, Tonya Chin. The main takeaway from the investor meeting was that the company's long-term opportunity remains unchanged.

Mohan maintains a Buy rating on Nutanix's stock boos with a price targeted from $30 to $35 as the company remains in "hyper growth mode." Specifically, after a 63-percent revenue growth rate in fiscal 2017 there is still room for the company to grow 35 percent next year with no incremental investments. Gross profit dollar growth is also projected to be above 40 percent over the next two years.

Nutanix's executives explained that the legacy 3-tier infrastructure represents a $100 billion total addressable market, the analyst noted. The company expects to move to a Hybrid cloud model and gain share in the space given its three key areas of differentiation, including simplicity, scalability and choice.

"Williams noted that the hardware on the HyperConverged appliance (i.e. servers) was
commoditized a while ago, and was followed by a commoditization of the Hypervisor itself," Mohan wrote (see his track record here). "The real value-add for Nutanix is in the software and up the stack. The company is nipping at the software-defined-networking capabilities of NSX (VMware's SDN), and is adding features like micro-segmentation within network security. The ultimate goal remains to provide a cloud Operating System that can manage workloads by their
characteristics and move them to the most efficient destination."

Finally, Nutanix's investors will likely rerate the stock's multiple higher as the company is viewed more of a software asset company as opposed to a hardware company.

At time of publication, shares of Nutanix were up 4.04 percent at $22.43.

https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/17/09/10069179/nutanix-is-still-in-hyper-growth-mode-what-to-expect-ov