Buy Jamf Stock. Apple Is at the Core of the Software Company’s Appeal.
Illustration by Michael Glenwood
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When you live by
Apple
,
you die by Apple.
Jamf Holding
investors learned that the hard way—but its stock looks ready to rebound.
The past four months haven’t been good for Jamf. On Nov. 10, Apple (ticker: AAPL) announced that it would launch Apple Business Essentials, which would provide new-device onboarding and cloud management for small businesses. That’s exactly what Jamf (JAMF), which serves businesses and educational institutions, does, and its stock has plunged 32% since the announcement.
The steep drop in the stock seems like an overreaction. While Apple’s announcement was alarming, there are signs that Apple still sees Minneapolis-based Jamf as a partner, not a competitor, and that its new unit won’t hit the software company’s sales too hard. Larger customers, including
Salesforce.com
(CRM),
IBM
(IBM),
General Electric (GE)
,
and even Apple itself, appear to be sticking with Jamf. At about two-thirds the price it was trading at just a few months ago, the stock looks like a good pickup now.
Jamf’s growth certainly looks impressive. On March 1, the $3.9 billion company reported a fourth-quarter profit of two cents a share, beating forecasts by a penny, on sales of $103.8 million, ahead of forecasts for $100.3 million. It also reported total annual recurring revenue of $412.5 million, above Wall Street expectations of $399 million and up 45% from the previous year, with organic annual recurring revenue—which doesn’t include new acquisitions—up around 37%.
Analysts are expecting annual recurring revenue, or ARR, to compound at a 24% annual clip, to $632 million, for the next two years. That will be driven mostly by commercial…
