Globalscape (GSB): Excellent Results, New Cloud Hype

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It was looking bleak for awhile, as company after company that I owned reported weak top-line growth or disappointing profitability during the last quarter. It’s hard to hit a homerun in a stock unless you have both revenue and profit growth combined with very low expectations. Finally, one company, GSB, delivered a truly outstanding earnings report on all fronts (you can read the first GSB report here). The financials were much better than I expected, with revenue growth at 37% and EBITDA growth of 378% year-over-year and 61% quarter to quarter. My quick back of the envelope calculations imply that the stock is trading at 4X EV/EBITDA, which would be extremely low for a software company with exciting growth potential.

But, other than strong financials, what would get more investors interested in GSB? My guess is cloud computing, a hot topic in many tech circles (see this article where GOOG’s CEO called the cloud “the centerpiece of our 2010 strategy.”)

Here’s what GSB had to say about its cloud services and its new parternship with Rackspace:

“GlobalSCAPE announced on its 2009 Fiscal Year End earnings call in March that the Company intended to focus additional activity on channel sales and potentially enter adjacent markets. For example, GlobalSCAPE has signed an initial partnership agreement with Rackspace Hosting Inc, a global leader in web hosting and hosted cloud system infrastructure services. The current partner agreement allows GlobalSCAPE to resell Rackspace’s services. While declining to provide more specific information at this time, CEO Morris stated, “We recognize and appreciate the growing importance of the cloud and cloud-based services. We are working with Rackspace to identify and define mutual business opportunities that best leverage our collective capabilities.”

The bottom line as I mentioned in my first post on GSB, is that new enterprise software deals, improving year-over-year financials, potential exciting deals (like the one with Rackspace), should send GSB’s shares higher over the next year.

Disclosure: Affiliates of Envoy Global Research, and its principals, own shares in GSB. All ideas, opinions, and/or forecasts, expressed or implied herein, are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a recommendation to invest, trade, and/or speculate in the markets. Any investments, trades, and/or speculations made in light of the ideas, opinions, and/or forecasts, expressed or implied herein, are committed at your own risk, financial or otherwise