Growth stocks have seemed to stop their descent as risk appetite has slowly returned to the market. C3 AI (NYSE:AI) stock was one of those growth plays that have been severely punished by Wall Street for the perceived lackluster results.
AI stock is down more than 60% from its highs however it seems to have been finding support at the $60 price level. It should open today at about $61.60
I remain bullish on the stock and believe that the company is properly laying the foundation for future growth.
Wall Street Analysts had been disappointed with C3 AI’s latest earnings release. This is despite reporting a decrease in net loss and a 26% increase in revenues.
Revenues for fiscal Q4 were $52.3 million, which is an increase from $41.6 million at the same time last year.
As a result of these so-called mixed results, Wedbush reduced the price target of AI stock from $175 to $100.
Canaccord Genuity and Deutsche Bank both reduced their price targets as well from $120 to $75 and $98 to $63 respectively.
These downgrades reflect Wall Street’s short-term thinking as C3 AI actually had a few solid wins for the quarter. The company extended its contract with Shell (NYSE:RDS) thus proving the value-add of the company’s AI systems.
C3 AI also grew its total number of enterprise customers by 89, an increase of 82% compared to the same time last year.
Partnerships, Sales and AI Stock
Despite the earnings miss, C3 AI is continuing to build out its partnership pipeline.
The company recently announced a partnership with data cloud company Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW). This collaboration has the potential to create a value-added service for enterprise clients more than a sum of the individual parts.
Snowflake’s cloud data platform generates a ton of data as it runs concurrently across multiple clouds and regions. Enterprise clients can analyze the data generated from those cloud servers using C3 AI’s suite of AI products to generate insight that may not be readily apparent.
Remember that C3 AI actually has a suite of pre-built AI applications right out of the gate. This partnership will allow Snowflake customers access to these AI tools without replicating the data thus reducing workload and improving turnaround times.
There are many use cases already for C3 AI’s product suite as its tools are being used in industries as wide-ranging as banking to national defense.
Apart from Snowflake, C3 AI also has a strategic partnership with Infor, a cloud-based ERP service provider.
Infor plans to use integrate C3 AI’s product offering with its own solutions. The partnership will focus initially on Internet of Things systems but will eventually move to other verticals.
“By augmenting our existing Infor product portfolio with prebuilt AI applications from C3 AI that run natively in the cloud, we can expand the Infor portfolio of use cases and further position Infor to capitalize upon the cognitive era,” said Infor CEO Kevin Samuelson.
Your Key Takeways
I like that C3 AI is continuing to gather strategic partners in order to sell its AI products. It is also smart of the company to partner with enterprise platforms such as Snowflake and Infor as it will reduce the friction of selling their product.
Enterprise sales typically take a long time and vendors need to go through the corporate bureaucracy before being able to land a sale.
These partnerships effectively ensure that C3 AI has “one foot through the door” when selling to enterprise clients. It will also ensure that the C3 AI suite is properly integrated with existing clients’ technology systems thus ensuring a smooth deployment and immediate value-add.
I believe that C3 AI is one of the leaders in the AI space which has massive potential. I fully expect the pace of adoption of AI technology to be slow at the start.
However, I believe adoption could easily hockey-stick in the immediate future. I continue to like C3 AI.
On the date of publication, Joseph Nograles held a LONG position in AI. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
