Alteryx - Will It Be A Phoenix Or Some Other Kind Of Bird?

Summary

• Alteryx shares have fallen out of favor with growth investors after reporting a disappointing quarter and providing very cautious guidance.
• Unlike many other software companies, Alteryx has forecast that its results will be pressured by the economy through the balance of this year.
• Depending on specific estimates, for the first time in many years, Alteryx shares have reached bargain levels in terms of EV/S valuation.
• There is no evidence that the longer term future for analytics has dimmed, and indeed it is part of the digital transformation revolution whose adoption, overall, has probably been accelerated as part of user reaction to the pandemic.
• Alteryx continues to maintain its leadership in its space and has been able to expand its TAM by adding features and functions to its core platform.

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Alteryx - Has it hit a speed bump or is it guiding to hyper-conservative levels?

Alteryx (AYX) has been one of those names that I had never contemplated selling. I had bought a significant position in the shares in the fall of 2017, and continued to maintain a substantial position, although I had trimmed some over time because of the need to maintain a balanced portfolio for my Ticker Target service. I have viewed Alteryx as being a company in the right space with strong user satisfaction and a powerful selling motion, and a pioneer in its space that has been well acknowledged as a category leader. Who doesn’t want to invest in advanced data analytics solutions. Who doesn’t want to invest in a company that formulated solutions for citizen data scientists. I happened to sell my entire position in the shares, more by luck and chance than because I had contemplated the quarter that the company reported on August 5, 2020. My sale was based on raising cash in the Ticker Target portfolio, as I contemplated a market that had become quite frothy and was not a call on the Alteryx quarter, or the outlook I had for Alteryx. And at the time I sold it, the shares had appreciated something like 7X and there is something comforting about ringing the register But really, the essence of the transaction was that I got lucky.

It has been almost 2 months since I sold the last shares of my Alteryx position. There has been a mini-correction in the IT space as a concomitant to some sector rotation away from the Information Technology space. Overall, Alteryx

Analyst’s Disclosure:I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, but may initiate a long position in AYX over the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.