MongoDB Inc. blew past Wall Street’s expectations today as it reported its first-quarter financial results, but the database software company’s stock fell in after-hours trading after it warned of a wider second-quarter loss than analysts were expecting.

The company, which sells an open-source, document-oriented database of the same name that’s used to power big-data applications and other intensive workloads, reported a loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 13 cents per share on revenue of $130.3 million. Wall Street had forecast a much bigger loss of 25 cents per share on revenue of $119.7 million.

MongoDB executives had warned investors three months ago that the company was likely to take a hit because of the coronavirus pandemic that was only just beginning to emerge at the time. As it turned out, the initial impact wasn’t so bad, but MongoDB President and Chief Executive Dev Ittycheria (pictured) said today that uncertainty is likely to cloud the company’s prospects for some time to come.

“MongoDB’s strong first quarter performance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the value of our modern data platform for the success of our customers,” he said. “While the impact from COVID-19 will be longer than we originally expected at the beginning of this fiscal year, we are seeing clear signs that the current environment is reinforcing the long-term trends towards digital transformation and cloud migration.”

For the second quarter, MongoDB said it’s expecting a loss of between 38 and 41 cents per share on revenue of $125 million to $127 million. Wall Street had forecast a second-quarter loss of 37 cents per share on revenue of $121.3 million.

MongoDB’s stock fell more than 3% in after-hours trading.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said that despite MongoDB’s conservative outlook, the company’s prospects look bright as it continues to maintain its “darling” status among software developers.

“MongoDB offers good functionality, measure innovation and its developer community becomes more vibrant with every quarter,” Mueller said. “MongoDB World online will help to bolster that trend, with likely record attendance and engagement. MongoDB has increased both appeal and viability with its ability to run across all major cloud infrastructure platforms, making it an infinite compute platform for enterprises to power their next generation apps.”

Photo: SiliconANGLE