Pick up Okta, Inc's latest annual report and on page 18 comes the warning that the company has a history of losses and these will continue in the foreseeable future. Another 26 pages down, it tells shareholders that it does not intend to pay dividends for some time to come.

Yet, the San Francisco-based identity and access management company, whose business has got a dramatic boost with the shift to remote work, has a market capitalisation of US$39 billion (S$52 billion). As identity security emerges as a key battlefield in cyber security, Okta, which reported total revenue of US$567 million for the first half of fiscal year 2022 and expects to finish the year with more than US$1.2 billion revenue, projects this to rise to US$4 billion by 2026.