Owning C3.ai, Inc. is like going to Six Flags Over Texas and riding the wooden roller coaster. Shake it up.
MW AI startup C3.ai's stock is down 20% after softer revenue guidance
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By Jon Swartz
Shares of white-hot Ai startup C3.ai Inc., which had been hurtling toward record highs earlier this week, took an abrupt U-turn on Wednesday.
The company's stock (AI) plunged 14% in after-hours trading in the minutes leading up to its quarterly financial results. And when C3.ai reported mere minutes before its earnings call at 5 p.m. Eastern, the stock continued its tailspin, dropping 20% on soft annual revenue guidance.
C3.ai, whose entry in the artificial-intelligence market several years ago presaged the recent land rush, rang up $72.4 million in revenue, flat from $72.3 million in the same quarter a year ago.
C3.ai reported a fiscal fourth-quarter net loss of $64.9 million, or 58 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $58.4 million, or 55 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter, for an adjusted loss of 13 cents a share.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected on average a net loss of 17 cents a share on revenue of $71.3 million.
"As we began the fiscal year on May 1, the company has never been better positioned," C3.ai Chief Executive Tom Siebel said in a statement announcing the results. "I believe we now have broad consensus that the addressable market for Enterprise AI is extraordinarily large and rapidly growing."
However, C3.ai's fiscal 2024 revenue guidance of $295 million to $320 million was on the light side of analysts' estimates of $317 million.
As the AI hype machine has shifted into fifth gear the past several months, shares of C3.ai have catapulted 258% this year, while the broader S&P 500 index has climbed 9%.
-Jon Swartz
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