Updated:

Pure Storage Inc.‘s stock took a huge beating today after the data storage company reported third-quarter revenue that missed estimates by some distance.

And if that wasn’t enough, the company’s revenue guidance for the next quarter also came up short.

Pure Storage, which sells a range of flash memory-based data storage hardware and software products, reported a net loss of $30 million. Earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation came to 13 cents per share on revenue of $428.4 million, up 15% from a year ago.

Broken out, Pure Storage said product revenue for the quarter came to $323.3 million, with support and subscription revenue of $105 million.

Wall Street had forecast adjusted earnings of just 9 cents per share, but it was expecting much bigger revenue of $440.7 million.

To make matters worse, Pure Storage issued guidance for the next quarter that also fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts. The company said it’s expecting fourth-quarter revenue in the range of $484 million to $496 million, versus the analyst consensus of $511 million.

Investors reacted the only way they know how in such circumstances, and a massive sell-off of Pure Storage’s stock ensued. Shares were down 23% in after-hours trading. Update: Shares fell 15% Friday, to $16.86 a share.

The disappointing quarter comes at a time of ongoing turbulence in the enterprise storage market in general, which continues to suffer from a massive oversupply of flash products that’s putting a damper on profitability.

Pure Storage Chief Executive Officer Charlie Giancarlo (pictured) addressed those problems in a conference call with analysts, noting there have been two double-digit price drops on storage arrays in the last two quarters.

Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Steve McDowell told SiliconANGLE that such a price drop is “highly unusual” in a core infrastructure market such as storage, so Pure Storage is hurting as a result.

“Giancarlo outright said that a key driver for the pricing pressure is major competitor pursuing a cost-plus model that has driven down prices across the board, and this has had a ripple effect across the industry,” McDowell said. “That sort of move resets customer expectations on pricing.”

Still, McDowell said there’s good reason to believe Pure Storage can ride out the current storm. He pointed out that it had shipped more terabytes and richer configurations in the quarter just gone compared to the previous three-month period.

Other metrics look good too, he said, with unit shipments up and gross margins at record highs. The suggestion is that the market does at least appreciate Pure Storage’s products and that the company is maintaining good fiscal discipline, he said.

The analyst said he was confident Pure Storage can turn things around, but the question is: How much time will it need?

“That’s hard to say, but the [longer-term] prospects are good,” McDowell said. “Pure is expanding into the file-server market sometime next year, which will put them even more head-to-head against NetApp and drive customer expansion. Pure’s new QLC-based array is apparently a big hit, with Charlie indicating that it’s their fastest launch in the company’s history.”

Pure Storage’s results are its first since holding its annual Pure//Accelerate conference, which took place in September around the company’s 10-year anniversary. Giancarlo appeared as a guest on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during its coverage of the event, where he talked about the company’s plans to revolutionize the storage market:

Pure Storage also announced the appointment of Kevan Krysler as its new chief financial officer today, several months after the previous CFO departed. Krysler most recently served as senior vice president of finance at VMware Inc.

Photo: SiliconANGLE