Cloud identity management company Okta Inc. posted a strong set of financial results Thursday as it capped off its fiscal 2020, showing especially strong momentum with enterprise customers.

The company reported a fourth-quarter loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of a penny a share on revenue of $167.3 million, up 45% from a year ago. That was better than expected, as Wall Street analysts had Okta down for a wider loss of 5 cents per share on revenue of $155.85 million.

The company’s bottom line was not the only indicator of Okta’s strong momentum. It also reported subscription revenue of $158.5 million, up 46% from the same period one year ago. Total calculated billings jumped 42%, to $225 million, while the total number of companies with contracts worth more than $100,000 rose 41%.

Another important metric to look at is Okta’s total remaining performance obligations, which came to $1.21 billion, up 66% from a year ago. Meanwhile, its current RPO rose 54%, to $592.3 million.

RPO is a useful metric for investors because it gives them more visibility into the company’s recurring subscription business. Current RPO refers to contracts that are due within the next 12 months, while total RPO gives a better view of the firm’s overall contractual business, including any multiyear contracts.

For the full year, Okta reported a loss of 31 cents per share on revenue of $586.1 million, up 47% from a year ago.

Investors liked what they saw, as Okta’s stock gained more than 4% in the after-hours trading session.

In an interview with SiliconANGLE, Frederic Kerrest, Okta’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said the company was benefiting from a major shift by enterprises away from older security technologies such as firewalls and virtual private networks, to embrace newer ideas such as the zero trust model that Okta enables.

“People are talking about how to make sure the right people have the right access at the right time,” Kerrest said. “Given Covid 19, people are going to be working more remotely and that’s exactly what zero trust is designed for.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that Okta was proof that identity management is becoming a big deal for enterprises as they shift more workloads to the cloud.

“Okta is at the heart of that trend and is not surprisingly doing well,” Mueller said. “In the long run it will have to look at further value opportunities beyond identity management, and it also needs to stay ahead of the public cloud vendor alternatives.”

Okta’s strong performance was tempered somewhat by first-quarter earnings guidance that came in below analysts’ expectations. The company said it expects a loss of between 24 and 27 cents per share  on revenue of between $171 million and $173 million. Wall Street had earlier forecast a loss of 14 cents on lower revenue of just $166.37 million.

Kerrest tried to explain this away, saying the company was forecasting a wider loss in the next quarter because it plans to make a lot of investments, including new hires.

“Last year we grew our headcount 44% in the second half of the year,” Kerrest said. “We’re going to hire more people this year than last year, and a lot of that comes in the first quarter.”

With reporting from Paul Gillin

Photo: Okta/Facebook