And has been growing 30% YoY for the last 3~4 years alone. This is unheard of in any other industry/market.
Their FCF is also impressive.
It has been common for the leaders in every other market throughout commercial history, as it pertains to corporations of large size. What you're looking at are presently old industries and comparing them to newer, that's where your mistake rests.
Walmart did it. Sears did it. Kmart did it. Best Buy did it. US Steel and its components did it. The various automobile majors did it. Standard Oil and the other oil majors did it. General Electric did it. Caterpillar did it. Pan Am did it. Many of the railroad companies did it during their time. McDonald's, Starbucks and most large chains do it during their expansion->saturation phase. Coca Cola did it.
It's exceedingly rare to find a large corporation that didn't bang out 30% growth years for a decade or more to get as big as they got.
One day, decades from now, "cloud" will look like a big dead industry too, and people will talk about how it never grows fast. Just ask the people that used to make business software you install onto PCs.
Facebook took 17 years and Walmart took 25 years to reach $85B in sales.
Most tech companies have ~80% gross margins. Walmarts is ~25%.
You simply cannot compare the two.
Growing revenue while still not making a profit is not impressive. If you give me $100 today I can go out a buy $100 a pair of new shoes, and sell it for $70. Give me $200 and I'll go out and by two pairs of shoes and sell them for both $84 (total)! Keep giving me money and you'll continue to see this growth I promise!
> This is unheard of in any other industry/market
Given my example above, that should be a warning, not a sign of success.
I find it mind-boggling that people can really not even grasp that growing revenue with out demonstrating you can transform that revenue into profit doesn't mean all the much.
Grow profits every year by 30% and I'll be impressed.
It is when you’re a software company and the marginal cost of the goods is zero.
$600mm annual sales and marketing isn't cost of goods but the method of accounting that I subscribe to includes such costs as a fundamental cost of production delivery.
Hilarious that you use the analogy of shoes. This is exactly the problem. Great explanation on this concept:
https://a16z.com/2015/05/15/a16z-podcast-why-saas-revenue-is...
> Grow profits every year by 30% and I'll be impressed.
Oh, you mean like Facebook did?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-...
20-30% doesn't get you to a justification for Atlassian's peak value. It doesn't inspire "the next Microsoft" vibes.
Maybe after 10-15 years of growth at this rate, it would... but the market's not paying these prices for that.
Atlassian becomes an acquisition target if stock prices reflect a 20% rate of growth.
