Big-data management company Cloudera Inc. saw its stock take a huge beating in after-hours trading, falling by more than 28 percent thanks to lower-than-expected guidance on revenue growth this year.

Update: On Wednesday, investors hammered shares even harder, as the stock fell 40 percent for the day.

The company reported a loss after certain costs such as stock compensation of $43.9 million, or 31 cents a share. Total revenue for the quarter came in at $103.5 million, up 42 percent year-over-year. That compared favorably with Wall Street’s estimates of an adjusted loss of 23 cents a share on sales of $98.7 million.

What had investors running for the hills was Cloudera’s revenue growth guidance. Cloudera said it’s expecting an adjusted loss of 17 to 19 cents per share on $101 million to $102 million in revenue in the first quarter 2019 — not far off analysts’ forecast of a 17-cent loss on revenue of $102.4 million.

But the forecast for the full year came in well below expectations. Cloudera estimated it will post a loss of 59 to 62 cents per share on $435 million to $445 million in revenue — the latter well below the analyst consensus of $460.5 million.

“Cloudera’s results came during a period of wild market swings that many attributed to weakness and uncertainty among some technology vendors, including a few name-brand players,” said Charles King of analyst firm Pund-IT Inc.

Cloudera, whose competitors include fellow big data company Hortonworks Inc. and MapR Technologies Inc. as well as public cloud giants Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp., began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last year. The bulk of its revenue comes from subscriptions. In the most recent quarter, the company said its subscription revenue actually grew by 50 percent.

But during a jargon-laden conference call, Cloudera Chief Executive Tom Reilly conceded that the company had pursued too many new customers outside its main target market during the most recent quarter. That meant it fell short in bookings specifically in the areas of existing customer expansion. Reilly also said the company found it was becoming increasingly expensive to acquire new customers.

It’s a problem many open-source-software-based companies face, said George Gilbert, an analyst with Wikibon, owned by the same company as SiliconANGLE. It takes a lot of spending to make sure the software meets the rigorous requirements of large enterprises, yet it sells for less than traditional enterprise software and faces more competition from both free alternatives and more integrated cloud service providers. “The pace of innovation is churning so fast that it’s hard for anyone selling this stuff to keep their head above water,” he said.

In the call, Reilly admitted as much, saying that the company’s so-called “land and expand” sales strategy is no longer able to grow at the same rate as it had been within its current customer base. Chief Financial Officer Jim Frankola later said the model of starting off small in enterprises and slowly expanding is working with the company’s larger customers. Nonetheless, he added that changes to the company’s strategy will likely impact future sales.

“The cohorts that represent our largest customers are still growing at roughly 136 percent,” he said. “So the land and expand model is really working. As we look at the changes that we’re putting in for the first half of next year, we expect that to impact our bookings… which will eventually reflect in billings and revenue for the year.”

Those changes are expected to include a narrower focus on a subset of the world’s largest 8,000 companies. Officials expressed confidence that these refined sales tactics would pay off, but warned it would take time for these efforts to fuel renewed growth.

Cloudera may also need to take a look at its product range if it wants to boost its appeal to enterprises that seem more interested in the potential of emerging technologies than existing ones, said one analyst.

“It’s the mensis horribilis for the FAANG stocks and smaller stocks like Cloudera lack the love of investors as well,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. “In a world more preoccupied with AI than big data, Cloudera needs to find revenue alleys to monetize this trend better.”

At least it does appear that the company is sniffing around in this direction. During the call, Reilly said he’s planning to make further changes, with plans to bring in more specialists in areas such as cloud computing, machine learning and data analytics. The CEO also said he’s looking to hire a new sales chief who can boost the company’s annual revenue over the $1 billion mark.

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