What happened
Shares of Phunware (NASDAQ: PHUN) are seeing a significant pullback in today's trading. The software company's stock price was down roughly 7.9% as of 11:15 a.m. ET Thursday and had been down as much as 14.9% in the daily session.
Phunware published its full-year earnings results after the market closed Wednesday, and earnings fell short of the market's expectations despite sales coming in ahead of the target. The company posted a loss per share of $0.71 last year on revenue of $10.64 million, while the average analyst estimate had called for a per-share loss of $0.32 on sales of $10.27 million.
So what
While Phunware's revenue in the fourth quarter surpassed the market's target by roughly $370,000, the fourth-quarter loss per share came in $0.39 worse than anticipated and closed out the year with performance that was significantly weaker than anticipated.
The company ended 2021 with sales up roughly 6.4%, which was solid considering that it was facing some challenging growth comparisons, but mounting losses prompted investors to move out of the stock despite management issuing some exciting revenue guidance for this year.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
Phunware helped build the mobile application for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign and provided additional data-analytics services, and it looks like the company might be anticipating a significant uptick in sales from the 2022 election cycle.
Driven by a combination of internal initiatives and potential acquisitions, CEO Alan Knitowski expects that the company will be able to grow its revenue more than 250% across the first half of this year. Knitowski also indicated that the business plans to increase its Bitcoin holdings.
Phunware now has a market capitalization of roughly $252 million and is valued at approximately 10 times this year's expected sales.
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Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
