William Blair & Company initiated research coverage of Anaplan, Inc. (PLAN $71.20), a cloud-based provider of connected planning software.
Analyst Matthew Pfau estimated the company would generate sales of $444.2 million in fiscal 2021 and $550.0 million in fiscal 2022. The company’s fiscal year ends in January. He believes Anaplan should be able to continue to grow subscription revenue in excess of 25% over the next several years.
“Anaplan provides connected planning software to over 1,500 customers, with a focus on large enterprises,” Pfau said. “The Anaplan platform is cloud-based and uses Hyperblock, a proprietary in-memory calculation engine, to allow users to quickly and easily build connected planning models. Connected planning allows multiple operational areas in an organization, such as sales, finance, supply chain, human resources, marketing, and operations, to build models to address different business use-cases and collaborate on the planning process. We view Anaplan’s Hyperblock technology, ease of use, applicability across multiple functional areas, and ability to ingest data from many different sources as differentiators versus competitors.”
Pfau continued, “Before COVID-19, there was already a need for companies to improve their planning processes across their organizations, and we believe that the pandemic only increases the imperative for companies to invest in modern planning software, owing to macro uncertainty, distributed workforces, and the need for continually updated forecasts and scenario analysis across the enterprise. We believe that the connected planning market is still underpenetrated, especially outside finance departments, and has not been an area of focus for legacy vendors. Over the past four years, Anaplan has increased its subscription revenue at a 35% compound annual rate, and we believe that the connected planning industry has more than enough runway for the company to grow subscription revenue above 25% over the next several years.”
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