Cloud subscription management services firm Zuora Inc. showed it’s making good progress today with second-quarter financial results that easily beat expectations.

The company reported a loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 9 cents per share on revenue of $69.7 million, up 21% from a year ago. Subscription revenue for the period came to $50.6 million, up 24%. The net loss, meanwhile, came to $20.8 million.

Wall Street had the company down for a much bigger loss of 14 cents per share on revenue of $66.9 million.

Zuora said it’s expecting a third-quarter loss of between 9 and 10 cents cents per share on revenue of $69 million. Analysts had earlier forecast a loss of 9 cents on revenue of $70.08 million.

All told, investors seemed happy enough with the results. Zuora’s stock jumped 9% in after-hours trading.

Besides the positive results, one reason for investors’ optimism might be that Zuora is seen as the strongest player in what is a unique market. The company sells a software-as-a-service offering that’s used to automate businesses’ subscription order-to-cash operations in real time. Companies use its platform to launch new businesses, shift products to subscriptions, implement new pay-as-you-go pricing and packaging models, gain new insights into subscriber behavior and attempt to disrupt market segments based on new pricing methods.

Zuora boasts some significant customers, including big enterprises such as Ford Motor Co. and General Electric Co., as well as tech firms such as hyperconverged infrastructure provider Nutanix Inc. and the cloud computing services firm Pivotal Software Inc.

The good news is that Zuora is adding more customers all the time. In the last year, its total customers with accounts valued at more than $100,00 a year grew to 566, up 19% from a year ago. The company also reported strong growth in customer usage of its platforms, generating more than $10.1 billion in transaction volume during the quarter, up 35%.

The company also found time to release a major update to its Zuora Central Platform in the quarter just gone. The new Summer ’19 release introduced new workflow builder and data query tools for developers to improve integration of subscription services with their financial operations, among other updates.

“We made progress with operational execution, product innovation and launched our Zuora Central Platform, all focused on delivering durable, long-term growth,” Zuora Chief Executive Officer Tien Tzuo (pictured) said in a statement.

Photo: SiliconANGLE