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Dropbox Inc.’s stock is one of Friday’s big movers — shares are down more than 10% in early-afternoon trading — despite quarterly results that beat analyst predictions.
The San Francisco-based data-services company DBX, -9.92% posted earnings of 22 cents per share excluding certain items, which was 5 cents higher than what FactSet analysts expected. The company recorded revenues improved 16% to $467 million, which beat estimates of $465 million.
Healthy sales outlooks for Q3 ($481 million to $484 million) and 2020 ($1.89 billion to $1.9 billion) further reflect Dropbox’s prime strategic position amid a COVID-19 crisis that is driving distributed work or working from home and other locations. Last year, the company launched Dropbox Spaces to help create a smart workplace that will increasingly drive sales.
In a conference call with analysts on Thursday, Dropbox described the move to distributed work as “analogous as the shift to mobile and adoption of the cloud,” Monness Crespi Hardt analyst Brian White said in a note Friday note that maintained a neutral rating on Dropbox shares.
But a personnel move did set off alarm bells, leading to what some analysts called a drop in Dropbox stock.
The announced departure of respected, long-time Chief Financial Officer Ajay Vashee, who is moving to the venture capital world, jolted AB Bernstein analysts Zane Chrane and Michelle Isaacs. A “seemingly abrupt handoff” to Dropbox Chief Accounting Officer Tim Regan over the next month likely drove down Dropbox shares, they said.
Still, strong growth in new subscriber application service providers led Chrane and Isaacs to raise their price target on Dropbox shares to $22 from $21 while they maintained an underperform rating. “Even as bears on the stock, we quite frankly cannot find anything to poke at in the results and continue to view Dropbox’s outlook more favorably,” they said in a note Friday.
“Vashee’s resignation adds to the recent slate of senior executive departures, and in our view, speaks to the company’s transitional state — from an emerging growth story to one that is maturing and more focused on the bottom line,” William Blair analyst Jason Ader said Friday in a note that reiterates an outperform rating.
