1 Under-the-Radar AI Stock With 50% Upside Potential
In today's increasingly digital world, the speed at which data is captured, processed, and acted upon is critical. That's where Confluent (CFLT), a technology company valued at a market capitalization of $8.1 billion, enters the picture. Founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka, Confluent provides a cloud-native data infrastructure platform that enables organizations to connect, store, and process real-time data streams at scale. Confluent stock has dipped 14% year-to-date (YTD), compared to the S&P 500 Index's ($SPX) gain of 1.9% YTD. Nonetheless, Wall Street believes CFLT stock has more than 50% upside potential over the next year. Let's see whether the stock is currently a buy.
Confluent follows a hybrid business model, providing both a self-managed software platform and a fully managed cloud offering. Subscriptions and usage-based pricing, which are increasingly popular among large enterprises due to their flexibility and scalability, generate revenue for the company.
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Despite a cautious enterprise cloud-spending environment, the company's first-quarter results for fiscal 2025 showed increasing momentum in subscription revenue, hybrid deployments, and new-generation offerings such as Apache Flink and Tableflow. Total revenue increased 25% year on year to $271.1 million, with adjusted earnings increasing by an impressive 60% to $0.08 per share.
During the Q1 earnings call, management emphasized that the company's focus on long-term platform expansion is beginning to pay off, despite the fact that macroeconomic pressures remain, particularly in large-scale enterprise consumption. Net retention reached 117% in Q1, demonstrating customer trust in Confluent's platform. Confluent generated $260.9 million in subscription revenue during Q1, up 26% year on year (YOY) and accounting for 96% of total revenue. Confluent Cloud, a fully managed, cloud-native product, generated $142.7 million, a 34% increase YOY. Furthermore, demand for hybrid and on-premises deployments enabled the company's self-managed Confluent Platform to generate a healthy $118.2 million in revenue, up 18% from the previous year. Management stated that Confluent Platform had its best first-quarter performance in three years.
Confluent's growth strategy is heavily reliant on migrating the estimated 150,000 organizations that still use open-source Kafka. Confluent added 340 net new customers during the period, marking its best quarterly performance in three years. Confluent's balance sheet showed $1.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the quarter's end. The company also generated $4.9 million in positive free cash flow (FCF) during the quarter, a sign of cost discipline.
Management reaffirmed its fiscal 2025 guidance with cautious optimism. Subscription revenue could increase by 19% to 20%, reaching $1.1 billion. Likewise, adjusted net income per share could be around $0.36 per share, compared to $0.29 in fiscal 2024. Additionally, analysts predict earnings will rise by 30.7% to $0.47 by fiscal 2026.
Despite being a small company, Confluent is rapidly growing. Its inclusion in mission-critical workloads is what distinguishes it. This technology is not experimental. In fact, it provides real-time network solutions to a variety of industries, including telecommunications, retail logistics and supply chain, and financial services fraud detection.
On Wall Street, CFLT stock is rated as a 'Moderate Buy.' Of the 31 analysts covering the stock, 20 rate CFLT as a 'Strong Buy,' three recommend it as a 'Moderate Buy,' seven call it a "Hold,' and one suggests that it is a 'Moderate Sell.' The average target price of $28.14 per share suggests an upside of 17.5% above current levels. The Street-high target price of $36 implies that shares could rally 50.4% over the next 12 months.
As the demand for real-time data infrastructure increases, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing, so will the demand for the Confluent's services. For long-term investors, Confluent provides an appealing combination of secular tailwinds, a deep technical moat, high gross margins, and a strong cloud growth engine. However, as a high-growth stock, it trades at a premium of 66x forward earnings. Consequently, risk-averse investors may want to wait for a better entry point.
On the date of publication, Sushree Mohanty did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com
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