Record sales for FlashBlade portfolio including FB//E

Expect nearly $400 Million of Combined Annual Evergreen//One and Evergreen//Flex Sales

Increased Operating Margin Annual Guidance

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Today Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG), the IT pioneer that delivers the world’s most advanced data storage technology and services, announced financial results for its third quarter fiscal 2024 ended November 5, 2023.

“Pure continues to see extraordinary growth in our Evergreen Storage-as-a-Service consumption services providing customers with a Cloud Operating Model for their multi-cloud infrastructure,” said Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO, Pure Storage. “And we have raised the bar for data storage management with strong SLAs that guarantee no change management downtime or disruption, and no future data migrations for hardware changes or replacements — all while simplifying data storage operations, optimizing cloud storage, and reducing costs.”

Third Quarter Financial Highlights 

• Revenue $762.8 million, an increase of 13% year-over-year
• Subscription services revenue $309.6 million, up 26% year-over-year
• Subscription annual recurring revenue (ARR) $1.3 billion, up 26% year-over-year
• Remaining performance obligations (RPO) $2.0 billion, up 30% year-over-year
• GAAP gross margin 72.5%; non-GAAP gross margin 74.0%
• GAAP operating income $74.2 million; non-GAAP operating income $169.1 million
• GAAP operating margin 9.7%; non-GAAP operating margin 22.2%
• Operating cash flow $158.4 million; free cash flow $113.4 million
• Total cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities $1.35 billion
• Returned approximately $22.4 million in Q3 to stockholders through share repurchases of 0.6 million shares

“We are pleased to see strengthening demand across our data storage platform, including the growth of our Evergreen//One Storage-as-a-Service offering, while also expanding our operating margin,” said Kevan Krysler, Chief Financial Officer, Pure Storage. “Our business strategy continues to focus on continually increasing the value we provide to our customers including our consumption and subscription based offerings.”

Third Quarter Company Highlights

• Industry-First Paid Power and Rack Commitment: In Q3, Pure tackled the growing challenges of managing rising electricity costs and rack unit space with the introduction of a first of its kind program which will pay for its customers’ power and rack space through an Evergreen//One Storage as-a-Service and Evergreen//Flex subscription, taking responsibility for the associated costs of power and rack unit to run our offerings.
• Storage as-a-Service Innovation: Already a leader in service-level agreement (SLA) guarantees, Pure added three new SLA guarantees for No Data Migration, Zero Data Loss, and Power and Space Efficiency across its family of Evergreen (//Forever, //One, //Flex) offerings.
• General Availability (GA) of FlashArray//E: FlashArray//E has begun shipping, completing the //E family of products. The combination of FlashArray//E and FlashBlade//E starting from 1 PB, taking Pure’s all-flash promise to the heart of the now-legacy disk market.
• Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems & Object Storage: Pure was named a leader for the third consecutive year in the rapidly growing storage market for unstructured data.

Fourth Quarter and FY24 Guidance

Q4 and FY24 revenue and revenue growth rates are reflective of continuing outperformance and increased momentum in Evergreen//One Storage-as-a-Service.

These statements are forward-looking and actual results may differ materially. Refer to the Forward Looking Statements section below for information on the factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Pure has not reconciled its guidance for non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin to their most directly comparable GAAP measures because certain items that impact these measures are not within Pure’s control and/or cannot be reasonably predicted. Accordingly, reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures guidance to the corresponding GAAP measures are not available without unreasonable effort.

Conference Call Information

Pure will host a teleconference to discuss the third quarter fiscal 2024 results at 2:00 pm PT today, November 29, 2023. A live audio broadcast of the conference call will be available on the Pure Storage Investor Relations website. Pure will also post its earnings presentation and prepared remarks to this website concurrent with this release.

A replay will be available following the call on the Pure Storage Investor Relations website or for two weeks at 1-800-770-2030 (or 1-647-362-9199 for international callers) with passcode 5667482.

Additionally, Pure is scheduled to participate at the following investor conferences:

UBS Global Technology Conference
Date: Thursday, November 30, 2023
Time: 7:55 a.m. PT / 10:55 a.m. ET
Chief Technology Officer Rob Lee

Barclays Global Technology Conference
Date: Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Time: 12:45 p.m. PT / 3:45 p.m. ET
Chairman and CEO Charles Giancarlo, and CFO Kevan Krysler

The presentations will be webcast live and archived on Pure’s Investor Relations website at investor.purestorage.com.

—-

About Pure Storage

Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) uncomplicates data storage, forever. Pure delivers a cloud experience that empowers every organization to get the most from their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. Pure’s commitment to providing true storage as-a-service gives customers the agility to meet changing data needs at speed and scale, whether they are deploying traditional workloads, modern applications, containers, or more. Pure believes it can make a significant impact in reducing data center emissions worldwide through its environmental sustainability efforts, including designing products and solutions that enable customers to reduce their carbon and energy footprint. And with the highest Net Promoter Score in the industry, Pure’s ever-expanding list of customers are among the happiest in the world. For more information, visit www.purestorage.com.

Analyst Recognition

Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage
Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems & Object Storage

Connect with Pure

Blog
LinkedIn
Twitter 
Facebook

Pure Storage, the Pure P Logo, Portworx, and the marks on the Pure Trademark List at www.purestorage.com/legal/productenduserinfo.html are trademarks of Pure Storage, Inc. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners. 

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding our products, business and operations, including but not limited to our views relating to future period financial results, demand for our products and subscription services, including Evergreen//One, our technology and product strategy, specifically customer priorities around sustainability, the benefits to our customers of using our products, our ability to perform during current macro conditions and expand market share, our sustainability goals and benefits, the timing and magnitude of large orders, the impact of inflation, economic or supply chain disruptions, our expectations regarding our product and technology differentiation, including FlashBlade//E and FlashArray//E, new customer acquisition, the continued success of the Portworx technology, and other statements regarding our products, business, operations and results. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward-looking statements.

Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted include, among others, those risks and uncertainties included under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our filings and reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our Investor Relations website at investor.purestorage.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Additional information is also set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended February 5, 2023. All information provided in this release and in the attachments is as of November 29, 2023, and Pure undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.

Key Business Metrics

Subscription ARR is a key business metric that refers to total annualized contract value of all active subscription agreements on the last day of the quarter, plus on-demand revenue for the quarter multiplied by four.

Sales, or bookings, of Pure’s Evergreen//One and Evergreen//Flex offerings is an operating metric, representing the value of orders received and/or expected to be received during the fiscal year.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP, Pure uses the following non-GAAP financial measures: non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP operating income (loss), non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP net income (loss), non-GAAP net income (loss) per share, and free cash flow.

We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Our management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity by excluding certain expenses and expenditures such as stock-based compensation expense, payments to former shareholders of acquired companies, payroll tax expense related to stock-based activities, amortization of debt issuance costs related to debt, amortization of intangible assets acquired from acquisitions, acquisition-related transaction and integration expenses, and costs associated with the exit of certain operations and closing of certain leased facilities that may not be indicative of our ongoing core business operating results. Pure believes that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing our performance and when analyzing historical performance and liquidity and planning, forecasting, and analyzing future periods. The presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP, and our non-GAAP measures may be different from non-GAAP measures used by other companies.

For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures, please see the tables captioned “Reconciliations of non-GAAP results of operations to the nearest comparable GAAP measures” and “Reconciliation from net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow,” included at the end of this release.

Reconciliations of non-GAAP results of operations to the nearest comparable GAAP measures

The following table presents non-GAAP gross margins by revenue source before certain items (in thousands except percentages, unaudited):

The following table presents certain non-GAAP consolidated results before certain items (in thousands, except per share amounts and percentages, unaudited):

Reconciliation from net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow (in thousands except percentages, unaudited):

SOURCE Pure Storage