Tableau Software Inc. reported fourth-quarter results today that beat Wall Street’s expectations on both profit and revenue, but its stock still fell slightly in after-hours trading.

The business intelligence analytics software company’s shares were down more than 5.5 percent at one point in the extended session before rallying somewhat to settle at 2.6 percent down.

The stock drop may well have something to do with how Tableau is changing the way it reports revenue under its subscription business model. The company is switching to a new standard called ASC 606, which recognizes a greater percentage of revenue from contracts up front. Previously, it reported revenue under the older ASC 605 standard.

Officials said the company would switch to the new standard fully in the next quarter, but for the time being it chose to report under both criteria. Once it completes the switch, it will become more difficult to compare the company’s year-over-year growth, since its revenue will be relatively larger than before.

Under the old standards, which is what Wall Street used for its forecast, Tableau reported a fourth-quarter loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 3 cents per share on revenue of $275.7 million. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 8 cents per share on revenue of $271.75 million. When adjusted for the new ASC 606 accounting rules, Tableau’s earnings came to a 3-cent profit on revenue of $336.3 million.

For the full year, Tableau reported an adjusted loss of 30 cents per share on revenue of $982.9 million under the older ASC 605 rules. Under the new rules, Tableau’s revenue came to $1.16 billion.

Thanks to the discrepancy, Tableau executives said the best way to measure its business health now is by looking at its annual recurring revenue. Somewhat conveniently, then, this figure hit $841 million, up 41 percent from the year before.

The numbers look good because Tableau has segmented its user base and widened the reach of its analytics tools in the last year. As a result, it captures greater recurring revenue, officials said.

“The shift to a reporting model emphasizing recurring revenues may rub some the wrong way,” said Charles King, president and principal analyst with Pund-IT Inc. “The point is that many investors prefer consistency in financial reporting, suspecting that companies tend to alter longstanding methodologies simply to bury bad news. Then again, given the run Tableau has had over the past couple of years ,shareholders may simply have decided to take profits while times are good.”

In a conference call with analysts, Tableau Chief Executive Officer Adam Selipsky (pictured) provided more details of the company’s progress, saying it added 140 new product features in 2018 and 15,700 new customer accounts. That brings total customer accounts at the end of 2018 to more than 86,000.

“The enterprise opportunity has also been a big area of focus over the past year,” Selipsky said on the call. “We’ve significantly expanded the breadth and depth of our analytics platform with new capabilities like Tableau Server on Linux, HyPer data engine technology and Tableau Prep, all while continuing to strengthen our security, governance and compliance capabilities.”

For the coming year, Tableau’s goals include integrating natural language processing features into its platform and extending its subscription offerings. The company also wants to expand into new international markets, Selipsky said.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that despite the confusion with Tableau’s new reporting methods, the company has performed well over the last year.

“Tableau keeps riding the visualization wave, powered by the insatiable desire from enterprises to visualize their growing amounts of data,” Mueller said. “In an era where data is the new oil, the emphasis isn’t only on storing and programmatically making sense of the data, but also giving people ways to understand, interpret and rationalize it.”

Tableau said it’s expecting revenue of $278 million to $298 million in the first quarter under the new ASC 606 rules. Earnings for the first quarter are projected to fall somewhere between a loss of 9 cents per share and a profit of a penny per share.

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