Mike Cannon-Brookes was justified in taking a victory lap during Atlassian’s earnings call on Friday morning following the Australian software icon’s quarterly results — his second as sole CEO following the departure of co-founder Scott Farquhar last year.
But, in a week where Chinese AI lab DeepSeek sent shockwaves through investment markets and the global technology industry, his longer-term optimism was cautious. “Anyone who tells you they know where this is going to be three years from now is a fool,” he told investors about artificial intelligence.
Atlassian posted a better than expected 30% rise in quarterly subscription revenue to USD1.21 billion ($1.93 billion) and its guidance for the next quarter also beat market expectations. Both are a culmination of the company pushing big corporate customers for its products like JIRA and Confluence onto the cloud, rather than servers hosted within their offices, where upgrades and bundles can be sold more easily.
The strong numbers triggered a near 20% surge in Atlassian shares in after hours trading, pushing the stock up to USD322 — its highest level since February 2022 and double the USD160 it was trading at just four months ago.
