Billion Dollar Unicorns: What Is Okta’s Inorganic Growth Narrative?

According to a Market Research Engine report published earlier this week, the global Identity and Access Management is estimated to grow 12% annually over the next few years to become a $14 billion industry by 2023. Recently reported results of the Billion Dollar Unicorn Okta (Nasdaq: OKTA) corroborate this rapid growth.

Okta’s Financials

Okta’s identity management solution simplifies the identity access management services for organizations by removing duplicative credentials and disparate authentication policies. Its fourth quarter revenues grew 59% over the year to $77.8 million driven by a 64% growth in subscription revenues to $72 million. For the quarter, GAAP net loss was $24.7 million, compared with $18.2 million a year ago. Non-GAAP net loss was $10.1 million or $0.10 per share, compared with $12.9 million or $0.66 per share a year ago. The market was looking for revenues of $74.4 million and an adjusted net loss of $0.14 per share.

It ended the year with revenues growing 62% to $260 million driven by a 67% increase in subscription revenues.

For the current quarter, Okta forecast revenues of $78-$79 million and a net loss of $0.15-$0.16 per share. The market was looking for revenues of $75.2 million and net loss of $0.21 per share. The company expects to end the year with $343-$348 million in revenues and non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.62-$0.67. The forecast was better than the Street’s estimated revenues of $343.9 million and a net loss of $0.75 per share.

Okta’s Rising Competition

Okta continued to expand its market share through several tie-ups and product upgrades. It recently announced a partnership with SailPoint to provide end-to-end identity for organizations. The partnership will help provide a solution that could offer security requirements that are both simple and secure while ensuring that they meet complex compliance and security requirements. Together, their solutions will allow the ability to manage a user’s access throughout the lifecycle, including initial onboarding, secure single sign-on, multi-factor authentication for application access, and automated off-boarding as users change roles or leave an organization. This is not the first partnership that Okta has signed. It has a similar arrangement with Palo Alto Networks as well.