VAST Data’s revenues grew seven-fold in its third fiscal 2022 quarter, ended October 31.
This was revealed by President Michael Wing through a tweet and a LinkedIn posting:
Can we estimate VAST Data’s revenues at this point?
If we distil out the main revenue points from VAST’s previous announcements we get this:
- April 2019 — First product launch.
- April 2020 — First year of sales were were significantly higher than any storage vendor in IT history. Pure Storage reported $6M revenues in its first fiscal year to provide a base comparison.
- August 2020 — 490 per cent Q2 revenue growth.
- February 2021 — FY2021 revenues 3.5x higher than FY2020. Finished Q4 FY2021 on $150M run rate.
- August 2021 — $30 million in orders announced (2x $10M and 1x $10M)
In order to grow like this VAST must be winning against the competition. And since it sells to large enterprises, that must mean vendors like Dell, Hitachi Vantara, HPE, IBM, NetApp and Pure Storage. How will they respond at a product strategy level, facing VAST’s single-tier QLC flash array with Optane help and efficient software? VAST has no block data access story, no hybrid cloud story, and neither does it have an edge (small, remote datacentres and embedded sites) offering. We expect competitive knock-off documents to focus on these attributes of the competing suppliers’ products.
So let’s summarise what we know and can surmise about VAST’s revenues even further:
- FY2020 — say $10M revenues (based on Pure $6M base).
- Cash flow positive exiting FY2020.
- FY2021 — Revenues 3.5x higher than FY2020 = $35 million.
- Q2 revenue growth of 490 per cent year-on-year.
- Q4 run rate $150M.
- Q3 FY2022 — 7x year-on-year growth.
As a stake in the ground I think its run rate is heading towards $500 million, and FY2022 revenues could reach $250 million, with an IPO possible in its FY2024 or possibly earlier. We could be witnessing the probable fastest-ever storage startup growth — to $500 million in annual revenues in just four years since product launch.
