Snowflake CEO urges investors to be patient with stock during multiyear cloud transition

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman said Wednesday that shareholders need to be patient with the company’s stock because the cloud transition is not happening overnight.

“Our business is really going to conduct itself really over considerable, long periods of time,” Slootman said in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer on “Mad Money.” “That’s sort of the message to investors to really understand we’re signing on here for a journey that’s five to 10 years.”

The comments came as shares of Snowflake tumbled as much as 8% in extended trading after the company reported fiscal first-quarter results.

While revenue grew 110% year over year to a better-than-expected $228.9 million, the data-analytics software firm also reported a net loss of $203.2 million. That’s up from $93.6 million in the same period a year earlier. At the same time, Snowflake also raised its full-year guidance for product revenue.

Snowflake went public in September in a record-breaking IPO, with shares closing that initial trading day at $253.93. However, the stock was below that level at Wednesday’s close. Snowflake shares are also down 16% year to date, as investors have rotated out of high-flying growth names into economically sensitive companies that stand to benefit from the Covid recovery.

Despite the recent moves on Wall Street, Slootman stressed that the company’s software is only becoming more important as enterprises shift away from databases tied to hardware.

“These are big, big changes that we are experiencing in the marketplace, and we’re just super happy to be in the middle of that and be an enabler of that,” he said, adding that Snowflake places its focus on growing at scale. “We’re not a growth-at-all-costs company.”