Investors in Imperva Inc. (NYSE: ) experienced an extraordinary session on Wall Street yesterday. The company's share price shot up 7.6% against a background of reports that the company was examining the possibility of being acquired, but the trend reversed in late trading and the share price plummeted 9.1% following a profit warning that the company issued at the close.
Imperva, founded by Shlomo Kramer, provides enterprise data security solutions. The company stated that it expected to record revenue of $57.5-58 million in its second quarter financial statements, which compares with previous guidance of $65.5-66.5 million.
The updated guidance still means revenue growth of 7.5-8.4% in comparison with the corresponding quarter of 2015, but, as a growth company, investors expect quarter-on-quarter growth from it as well, and the new guidance represents a 3-3.8% drop in revenue in comparison with the first quarter of this year.
Imperva sees a loss per share of $0.20-0.22 in the second quarter, or $6.4-7.1 million in total, which is substantially worse than its previous guidance of a net loss per share (on a non-GAAP basis) of $0.02-0.04 ($0.6-1.3 million).
Imperva president and CEO Anthony Bettencourt said, "We are disappointed with our second quarter financial results, which were primarily impacted by extended sales cycles across most geographies and verticals predominantly relating to larger deals. During the quarter, we also experienced a reduction in size of several large purchases. We suspect we are starting to see a reversion to pre-2015 procurement patterns, in which companies are breaking down projects into phases and buying and implementing over time rather than making a large up front purchase to protect most of their key databases. With the exception of 2015, this type of incremental purchasing pattern has been the norm for our industry and we are adjusting our sales and customer strategies accordingly.
"Notwithstanding our second quarter performance, we remain confident in the strength of our best-of-breed discovery, protection and compliance solutions. We do not believe that we are experiencing a change in the competitive environment as our win rates remained consistent during the quarter."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 12, 2016
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