Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadive On Valuation Following Q1 Earnings

In an exclusive interview with Benzinga, Tibco TIBX Chairman and CEO Vivek Ranadive discussed valuation following the company’s first quarter earnings announcement. EPS was $0.19 up from $0.18 year over year and revenue of $252.9 million up from $237.8 million year over year.

Last quarter, Ranadive stated that shares around the 20 dollar level is the best buying opportunity since the stock was five dollars. This week he reiterated his position, explaining, “If we were valued the same as companies who had comparable size, then the 20 dollar stock would be a 100 dollar stock. I think that this is actually a bigger buying opportunity than when the stock was five dollars. The company has an amazing presence with its customers, we have the full stack for doing fast data, we have a global presence, and we have very low risk because so much of our revenue is coming from existing clients.”

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Ranadive also emphasised the strength of Tibco’s product offerings versus competitors and commented on their valuation. “If you look at a company like Tibco, its bigger than Palantir and Tableau DATA combined... everybody knows that Tibco has a far superior product, Spotfire, to Tableau and its roughly a similar sized business. And Palantir is mostly a services business with not much product and that company is worth like ten billion; our technology completely blows that away. We’ve always had this belief that we want to grow but that we also want to make profit and the market treats it as if its almost a negative to make profit.”

Tibco has been aggressively repurchasing stock. 35.8 million dollars were spent buying shares last quarter on top of 130.7 million of stock during the fourth quarter of 2013. With over one billion in current assets, Ranadive was asked about additional purchases for the second quarter of 2014. “We’re committed to managing the flow, and putting our money where our mouth is, and continuing to buy back stock, so we will keep doing that. “

Shares of Tibco closed at $20.92 Tuesday.