Splunk Inc. shares fluctuated between slight gains and losses in the extended session Wednesday after the cloud-based enterprise software company reported quarterly revenue above Wall Street estimates but a wider-than-expected loss.
Splunk SPLK, +2.92% shares were last down less than 1% after hours, following a 2.9% gain in the regular session to close at $123.79. Over the past 12 months, shares have dropped 34%, compared with a 43% gain in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.14%.
Splunk reported a first-quarter loss of $471 million, or $2.89 a share, compared with a loss of $305.6 million, or $1.94 a share, in the year-ago period. The adjusted loss, which excludes stock-based compensation expenses and other items, was 91 cents a share, compared with a loss of 56 cents a share in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose to $502.1 million from $434.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast a loss of 70 cents a share on revenue of $491.7 million.
Annual recurring revenue, a software-as-a-service metric that shows how much revenue the company can expect based on subscriptions, rose 39% for the quarter to $2.47 billion, while analysts had forecast $2.44 billion.
“Our first quarter success was defined by customers accelerating their move to the cloud,” said Doug Merritt, Splunk’s chief executive, in a statement. “Data became an essential service in the past year as the pandemic solidified the urgent importance of digital transformation.”
Splunk expects second-quarter revenue between $550 million and $570 million, while analysts had forecast revenue of $561.6 million.