Always-volatile C3.ai shares are trading sharply lower in late trading Monday after the artificial intelligence software reported financial results for its fiscal third quarter ended January 31, the company’s first quarterly report as a public company. While revenues were ahead of the Street consensus view, investors may have been expecting more upside to Street estimates than the company delivered.
C3.ai (ticker:AI) went public in December at $41 a share, opening for trade at $100 a share. The stock has since traded as high as $183.90 on an intra-day basis. Ce.ai, which rallied 7.6% to $121.05 in Monday’s regular session, is off 10.8% to $108 in late trading.
For the quarter, CE.ai reported revenue of $49.1 million, up 19% from a year ago, and a little ahead of the Wall Street analyst consensus at $47.3 million. Subscription revenue was $42.7 million, up 23%. The company had a loss from operations of $18.5 million, and a non-GAAP operating loss of $11.9 million. On a per-share basis, the company lost 23 cents a share, wider than the Street consensus loss estimate of 19 cents.
For the April quarter, C3.ai sees revenue of $50 million to $51 million, slightly above the Street consensus forecast at $48.4 million, and non-GAAP loss from operations of $27 million to $28 million.
For the April 2021 fiscal year, the company sees revenue of $180.9 million to $181.9 million, ahead of the Street at $177.1 million, with a non-GAAP loss from operations of $49.1 million to $50.1 million.
“We continue to establish our leadership as the only enterprise AI software pure play,” CEO Thomas Siebel said in a statement. “This is a large and rapidly growing market; we continue to innovate; we continue to expand our market-partner ecosystem and associated distribution capacity; and we continue to demonstrate technology leadership. I believe that we are increasingly well-positioned to establish a global market leadership position in enterprise AI software.”
Consistently among the market’s most statistically expensive stocks, C3.ai at the end of the regular session were trading for about 64 times the company’s forecast for current year sales.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com
