Investors are showing their appreciation for the e-signature company DocuSign Inc. today, despite a mixed second-quarter financial report that saw it beat expectations on revenue but fall short on profit.

San Francisco-based DocuSign, which bills itself as a “digital transaction management” firm, reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of a penny a share. Revenue for the period rose 39% from a year ago, to $235.6 million.

Wall Street was hoping for slightly higher earnings of 4 cents per share, albeit on revenue of just $221.1 million.

The bulk of DocuSign’s sales came from subscriptions, accounting $220.8 million of its total, also up 39% from a year ago. The company also reported billings, which are often seen as an indicator of future growth, of $252.4 million, up 47% from a year ago. That was especially encouraging, as DocuSign had reported a much lower growth rate in its previous quarter.

All told, it was a pretty decent performance for DocuSign, and investors reacted warmly, as the company’s stock was rising Friday by nearly 20%.

That may have had more to do with the company’s guidance, though. For the third quarter, DocuSign said it’s expecting of between $237 million and $241 million. Wall Street had forecast revenue of just $220.8 million for the same period.

“With revenue growth exceeding 40% and billings growth at 47%, our second quarter performance reflects our clear leadership position in e-signature and increasing adoption of our broader Agreement Cloud offering,” Dan Springer, chief executive officer of DocuSign, said in a statement. “In the second quarter, we added 29,000 new customers onto the platform, bringing our total to 537,000 worldwide. We truly believe the Agreement Cloud category has the potential to be as big as CRM and ERP one day and our customers are increasingly buying in.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said the 40% year-over-year revenue growth alone shows that DocuSign is doing something right. And in this particular case what it’s doing is actually a fairly simple but transformative concept, he said.

“It’s helping enterprises accelerate their processes by moving from paper to digital documents,” Mueller said. “That is enterprise acceleration at its finest, changing best practices and standards for document management, and changing the future of work for people.”

DocuSign’s stock is up more than 16% since the beginning of the year.

Photo: DocuSign/Facebook