alt Hacker NewsThis is a pretty surface level analysis; Atlassian also has stock buybacks of billions of dollars each year. It's an intentional choice to not declare a profit and pay a dividend, and instead to reinvest in acquisitions and pay shareholders via stock buybacks.
You'll find it much more interesting to look at metrics like free cashflow, which is a better indicator as to whether the company is generating more cash during operations than it spends. This is a lot closer to the layman's idea of profit, and in a small business like a restaurant or single store it's often analogous to profit. In publicly traded companies, net profit and loss are borderline meaningless.
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There is no connection between profits and dividends, some monstrously profitable companies pay little to no dividends and return money to shareholders via buybacks. The act of doing an acquisition by itself also does not affect profits.
The reason Atlassian doesn't "declare a profit" is that they are not profitable - they pay a lot with SBC, thus diluting shareholders year after year and not returning anything.
The only reason it’s buying back the stock is because the price has been destroyed by the company’s underperformance. Also yes buybacks will reduce profit but an unprofitable company doing buybacks is not a healthy one.
Agree with the above general assessment that this is a company doing layoffs to address years of bad decisions and underperformance, and the broader issue of SaaS valuations as folks question valuations there. Just another case of “AI” as a PR puff excuse to avoid simply admitting this is about correcting prior bad management decisions.
They’re long themselves
Atlassian also issues billions worth of RSUs to employees every year. The buybacks are necessary to offset that. Shareholders are getting nothing out of it, and the fact that the stock price has been in freefall for years despite the buybacks shows that.
Software companies hid behind “free cash flow” and “YoY revenue growth” and “non-GAAP profit” for years in the zero interest world. Now that the heat has turned up a notch investors can see what I said before - most of these companies are wildly overstaffed and addicted to spending.