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Shares of Talend SA jumped surged nearly 14 percent in after-hours trading today on an unexpectedly narrower loss in its fiscal fourth quarter.

The company also showed good progress in its March to the cloud, with sales of Talend Cloud reaching 25 percent of new annual recurring revenue or ARR in the quarter and growing more than 100 percent year-over-year for the 10th quarter in a row.

Talend’s adjusted loss of 13 cents per share was less than half the 28 cents per share it reported a year ago. Revenue rose 38 percent, to $56 million. Analysts were expecting a loss of 15 cents on $56 million in sales. Quarterly subscription revenue was $48.4 million, up 33 percent year-over-year on an adjusted basis.

Talend estimated its first-quarter revenue will be between $56 million and $57 million, with an adjusted loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of between 32 and 29 cents a share. Full-year revenues are expected to come in between $248 million and $252 million, up about 25 percent over 2018.

The announcement was welcome news to investors who are still smarting from the company’s third-quarter earnings announcement, when weaker-than-expected growth in its cloud business sent the stock plummeting 35 percent in one day. Update: Shares closed up nearly 20 percent on Friday. But even with that strong performance, Talend shares are still trading at 38 percent below the $72 high reached last September.

Talend Chief Executive Mike Tuchen told SiliconANGLE that the drubbing the company’s stock took in the wake of last quarter’s earnings indicated that analysts were confused about the progress the company was making in transitioning its business to the cloud. In response, the company this quarter began reporting ARR, which is the annualized recurring value of all active contracts at the end of a reporting period.

Tuchen said ARR is a better indicator of growing cloud subscriptions. “The feedback we got from investors after the previous call is that they couldn’t understand all the moving parts, so we wanted to be as clear as we could,” he said in an interview. “By showing ARR we can show them the true health of the business.”

Like other software companies undergoing a transition to the cloud, Talend has also had to cope with the adoption of a new set of accounting rules called Accounting Standards Codification 606, which took effect last year. ASC 606 changes the way companies can recognize contractual revenue in a way that discounts cloud computing contracts in the short term while favoring license revenue. “What had been a tailwind from 606 is becoming less of a tailwind each quarter as our cloud mix increased,” Tuchen said.

None of this has affected Talend’s strategy of becoming a “cloud-first company.” Cloud revenues are expected to comprise half or more of ARR by the fourth quarter of 2019, and “I think in 2020 and beyond we’ll be a large majority cloud,” Tuchen said.

One factor contributing to the turnaround is last fall’s $60 million acquisition of Stitch Inc., which makes self-service data integration software. Although Stitch’s low-cost business model has contributed relatively little to revenue, the self-service features are valued by customers who prefer a “try-before-you-buy” approach to choosing data integration software.

Tuchen said Stitch is attracting about 100 new customers per month. “It dramatically streamlines and accelerates our ability to acquire new customers,” he said. Talend ended the fourth quarter with more than 3,000 customers.

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