**$RBRK , Rubrik DD (Position Included)**
[My YOLO post](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1h7e91h/rbrk_yolo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) <--- from earlier today.
**My Positions ($23k)**
\~$14,000 Stock and \~$9,000 in Initial Options purchased over past two weeks. After moving money to and from accounts.
https://preview.redd.it/n1f7dt72f55e1.jpg?width=411&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=18565b855e2f592afb91653cdb178e947c9b13c2
https://preview.redd.it/phaewsplf55e1.jpg?width=1626&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23febee6e63cf0e6cc8928cb48b41438f440d4a5
**Why write this?**
* I feel like we need a solid fucking company.
* I get too scared to buy aviation, nuclear, and crypto stocks.
* They weren’t listed on WSB’s Earnings board.
* I thought more people would like the YOLO.
* They POSSIBLY gave me a backpack when I was MAYBE working with them eight years ago.
[Rubrik Backpack](https://preview.redd.it/aq0rogvya55e1.png?width=628&format=png&auto=webp&s=7dc549da0311f723117c74e29efa2136085b9e84)
**DD Research**
**What is Rubrik ?**
* Rubrik is a backup & recovery provider that sits on top of a company’s cloud infrastructure.
**What is an example of Backup & Recovery I can maybe understand?**
* You drop your phone under a tire because you were to busy while parking, leading to a smashing of both it and the SIM card. The only fix is you buy a new phone, login with your iCloud email, and everything is restored from the cloud.
* Rubrik does the above and sells at-cost servers from partners like Dell, HPE, SMCI, etc. They protect data in places like AWS , Azure, and GCP.
* People pay whatever when they have no phone or car. Same here.
**How are you qualified?**
* I worked at a research company for five years partnering with SaaS vendors $5M-$250M, for two of those years I CAN NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY they may have been a client.
* I transitioned to Software Engineering three years ago from Tech Sales. I have tracked them and understand both the sales pitch and technology pitch.
* I saw them masterfully navigate researchers, which they still do, and become the golden child. Billions of dollars get validated by researchers.... it's importants.
* [(Updated) They Poached the Magic in 2018](https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/01/rubrik_gartner_hires/). One is doable but not three of them it delayed the research paper a year that doesn’t happen unless a research analyst dies.
* [(Updated) Because of 2018 poaching the late Fall report never got published (major delay), The 2019 Report Was Fought Back By Rubrik for Flawed Data](https://www.crn.com/news/storage/rubrik-ceo-gartner-data-center-magic-quadrant-seriously-flawed) . I've never seen a CEO do this without blowback Bipul again with a killer move.
* TL:DR; They were making moves YEARS ago. See article excerpt below.
[This is pretty rare, vendors complain but not publishing a document read by 4k+ CIO controlling the flow of billions of dollars in a sector. It's just insane. There's a lot of big names backing them. ](https://preview.redd.it/x3hcumds365e1.png?width=1152&format=png&auto=webp&s=0f1e26b7a5f66134efaf4447b77fa18f020f0837)
**Who’s in the market? Competitors?**
https://preview.redd.it/qq3hhafdg55e1.jpg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20d4d8a57db7467d15ffd2abaa24459d6ac8d60c
* Their only publicly traded competitor is Commvault which is around $170 and dropping.
* Veeam and Cohesity are private firms with very different architectures, support qualities, and applications. Rubrik is the only one fully doing what it does. They are considered the “Lexus”
**How are they different?**
* Rubrik views backup and recovery very differently from legacy vendors. They built their architecture based on expecting to get hacked (Backup & Recovery) vs. trying to prevent a hack (Incident Response). It's never been done "their way" before.
* Rubrik creates an air gapped layer on top of databases that - even if a hacker gets in they’re quarantined and the user can restore the system cutting them off. Thus less downtime, less support costs, payroll, legal fees, etc.
* They are very partner friendly with Mandiant, Crowdstrike, and Zscaler at least in the cutthroat cyber industry.
* Rubrik’s leadership , in particular the CEO Bipul Sinha, are not run of the mill. Bipul is personally a very kind, measured, and calculated leader, I’ve met him before. He’s a lovely man but a killer. He’s an engineer with a sales streak like Elon. Bipul has Nutanix and Bromium under his belt. Google Him. He essentially came out of retirement for this company from a cushy ass VC job.
* They know how to pitch investors, analysts, sales people, clients, basically everyone. They’re as buttoned up as you get and they come to impress. They earned their street cred 100%.
* They have consistently ranked as #1 according to Gartner in the Magic Quadrant. Beating out companies with very, very large balance sheets that don't have the balls to IPO in 2024.
**Why the sudden pop? (Things I thought were important)**
* Analysts needed another leap to profitability due to the only available historicals being from the April 2024 IPO and September Q2 earnings. This gave them pause on profitability as Rubrik as high operating margin.
* They raised 2025 Guidance. Indicated profitability by end of next year on this Q3 Earnings.
* Things I Heard on their Q3 Earnings today:
* They mentioned a Fortune 50 Healthcare company selecting them in a competitive win. UnitedHealthcare was hacked in February and had offline billing systems for like 20 days. I’m thinking they signed UNH, that’s a big cookie boys. It’s super fucking hard to rip and replace a legacy vendor.
* They passed $1B in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). This is a big metric. I heard both the Goldman Sachs and Barclays analysts say “Congrats” they seemed to be teeing up easier questions.
* [Everyone and their mother in Cybersecurity has heard of Rubrik. They got the same award as Google, Facebook, and others a month ago for Entrepreneurship](https://www.rubrik.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/24/rubrik-named-the-2024-entrepreneurial-company-of-the-year-by-the-harvard-business-school-hbs-association-of-northern-california)
* [This guy’s comment from 6 days ago. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1h2q6pw/comment/lzm990m/)
* [Yesterday, December 4th. Curious move by their competitor, Veeam, to announce $2B of funding, he must have known Rubrik was beating their ass in deals and wanted to jolt Rubrik's earnings calls or they are in financial trouble.](https://www.crn.com/news/storage/2024/veeam-ceo-on-latest-2b-funding-round-cohesity-veritas-merger-rubrik-ipo-and-data-resilience)
**Why did the stock not move from April to September 2024? (Timeline Below...)**
* **April 24th 2024 IPO Financials**
* Rubrik reveals a very high operating margin due to sales and marketing investments aka ripping out Zscaler’s sales team doing the “Salesforce” push. Blitzkreg the market.
* I believe they started planning ripping Zscaler in October 2023 , it takes time to ramp up. They probably got all big sales hires in by March with a six month ramp up take lands sales quotes around September when the stock crept up(
* [Sniping Zscaler Executives and Top Earners in October 2023. They had to give a fuck ton of stock to pry these boys away. ](https://channeleye.co.uk/rubrik-hires-another-zscaler/)
* [EDIT: (Updated with New Video) This lead to analyst skepticism about pricing controls. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEhqtSrVUE)
* **Septemeber 9th 2024 Q2 Earnings Financials**
* Earnings were month after the late July 2024 Crowdstrike hack, I do not think Rubrik was able to accelerate deal velocity to report ARR high enough to relieve market analysts and critics of the operating margin. They were asked about “deal velocity” by analysts today and it seems like the markets are pleased.
* [Bloomberg video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGvI0QbzzkY) from post-earnings is killer and a good recap of market sentiment.
* [Rubrik Search Trends Peaked In April Coinciding With the Major UNH Hack; however, they droped off after the huge spike.](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=rubrik&hl=en)
* I think analysts expected a quicker deal cycle around the UNH hack, 4 months/120 days is a very fast enterprise sales cycle. Most large sales deals can take 6-12 months if not longer.
* **October 2024:**
* I believe deal velocity picked up from the UNH hack and even with low search results, the three week hack fallout was enough to start sales cycles. Then from the Crowdstrike fallout, even as a partner, highlighted the need to immediately solve it as publicly traded companies were literally offline, no one working.
* Remember 60-120 days is a very fast sales cycle on any software sale. I think this is where we started heating up here as this is three months out from the hack.
* Today on earnings analysts seemed eager to ask about profitability as the CFO and CEO were comfortable to voice the 2026 is the year. Look there's alot of tech companies with -40 EPS floating around. It's not 2013-2018 you can't float on negative earnings and millions of users. <--- the market is speaking, you have to make money as a tech company.
* **November 2024:**
* Rising cybersecurity risk from election, TikTok hack, etc. Fidelity even paused my money for four weeks in a CMA because they had security issues with fraud.
* Stock was ticking up.
* **December 4th, 2024 (Yesterday):**
* Veeam $2B announcement mentioned earlier.
* Volume doubles to nearly 2M. It was 700k in July 2024. It's 4M Today. Nuts.
**Where will it go?**
* It seem comparable to Zscaler and Commvault in valuation. I'm long on it and believe it'll push past $100 by July 2025.