Talend SA beat revenue and earnings forecasts but confusion over its earnings-per-share (EPS) results took the stock on a wild ride in after-hours trading.

The Big Data integration software company reported total revenue of $25.4 million for the second quarter, up 38 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Earnings per share of 31 cents was better than analyst estimates, but early news reports, many of which are now written by robots, said the company badly missed expectations with a loss of $1.87 per share. The stock plunged more than 20% in after-hours trading before recovering somewhat.

The confusion was caused by a change in the total number of outstanding shares that occurred when Talend went public late last month. Issuance of additional stock increased the pool of available shares and improved EPS, but some news reports calculated EPS based on the pre-IPO share count. “The headlines said Talend missed its numbers, but they were exactly on top of what we expected,” Chief Executive Mike Tuchen (@MTuchen) said on the company’s earnings call.

Overall, the news was actually pretty good. The company said its year-over-year growth rate accelerated  in the quarter but offered guidance for the rest of the year that was even to slightly below Wall Street estimates.

Still, the results probably won’t ease investor concerns about the lukewarm initial public offering market for tech startups. Talend is one of just a handful of companies that have tested the public market waters this year. Another recent entrant, Pure Storage Inc., beat expectations in earnings posted this afternoon, boosting a market that has recently taken a dim view of its new tech entrants.

Talend’s subscription revenues increased 40 percent to $21.2 million and accounted for 84 percent of total sales. The company said it considers subscription revenue to be one of the key indicators of performance for its business.

Talend said big data and cloud demand were the largest contributors to growth. “Those products are growing at a combined rate of 100 percent year-over-year, and as they make up a bigger portion of our revenue it’s accelerating growth,” said Thomas Tuchscherer (@TomTuch), chief financial officer and vice president of corporate development at Talend, in an interview with SiliconANGLE minutes after the earnings were released.

Tuchen said the growth of the company’s cloud business is “a reflection of companies becoming much more comfortable doing their analytics in the cloud. Even companies that have been staying away from the cloud because of security concerns are starting to lean in,” he said. “Most of the people using cloud are also using big data.”

Operating losses more than doubled from $3.3 million in the second quarter last year to $6.8 million this year, a function of increased investments in sales and marketing, the company said. Headcount grew 32 percent to 617 employees.

For the full year, Talend guided expectations slightly lower, estimating a net loss of 24 to 27 cents per share, compared to a consensus of 25 cents. However, it said revenues are on track to hit $103-$105 million, which is slightly above consensus estimates. With half its revenues coming from overseas sales and its French origins, analysts worried that the company is vulnerable to turmoil caused by the Brexit vote, but Tuchscher said impact has been minimal. “The UK actually beat their plan” in the second quarter, he said. “So far we haven’t seen an impact that would cause us to change our plan for Europe.”

Tuchscherer said the company is maintaining a conservative posture of growing within its means, limiting spending to the free cash flow break-even point. “We have seen a lot of companies with a higher rate of cash burn, and the question that comes up is whether that’s a viable business model,” he said. “You can always spend to get greater growth. To do it efficiently is harder. We find that resonates with investors.”

Talend’s biggest competitor, Informatica Corp., has been less of a presence as it grapples with the profitability demands of its year-old status as a private company. “For customers who are on premise and want to move to the cloud, [the Informatica] scenarios are really challenging,” Tuchen said. “Even for very happy customers it becomes a jump ball, and that’s good for us.”

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