Ariba Earnings: Two Straight Quarters of Profit Broken by a Loss

Ariba, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARBA) reported its results for the third quarter. Ariba is a provider of collaborative business commerce solutions for buying and selling goods and services.

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Ariba, Inc. Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Loss narrowed to $760,000 (loss of one cent per diluted share) from $11.9 million (loss of 13 cents per share) in the same quarter a year earlier.

Revenue: Rose 12.3% to $137 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: Ariba, Inc. fell short of the mean analyst estimate of 9 cents per share. Analysts were expecting revenue of $135.3 million.

Key Stats:

The company has seen double-digit year-over-year percentage revenue growth for the past five quarters. Over that span, the company has averaged growth of 26.4%, with the biggest boost coming in the first quarter when revenue rose 39% from the year earlier quarter.

The company’s loss in the latest quarter follows profits in the previous three quarters. The company reported a profit of $2.4 million in the second quarter, a profit of $143,000 in the first quarter and $3.1 million in the fourth of the last fiscal year.

The company fell short of estimates last quarter after beating the mark the quarter before with net income of 7 cents versus a mean estimate of net income of 6 cents per share.

Margins increased in the second quarter after dropping the quarter before. Gross margin grew 1.4 percentage points from the year-earlier quarter to 63.9%. In the first quarter, the figure rose 0.5 percentage point to 62.7% from the year earlier quarter.

Looking Forward: Expectations for the fourth quarter have not changed from 9 cents. For the fiscal year, the average estimate has moved up from 28 cents a share to 31 cents over the last ninety days.

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(Company fundamentals provided by Xignite Financials. Earnings estimates provided by Zacks)

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