Pure Storage Inc. saw its stock crash today despite beating expectations with its second-quarter results.

The data storage company reported a profit before certain costs of 6 cents per share on revenue of $403.7 million, up 2% from a year ago. That was better than expected, with Wall Street having forecast a loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $395.34 million.

An encouraging sign came from Pure’s subscription service revenue, which came to $131.4 million, up 37% from a year ago. Pure also reported deferred revenue of $724.8 million, up 19.3%.

“We had a solid quarter, reflecting Pure’s unmatched technology leadership, simplicity, performance and extraordinary reliability that makes us the right decision during this time,” Pure Chief Executive Charles Giancarlo (pictured) said in a statement.

Analyst Steve McDowell of Moor Insights & Strategy told SiliconANGLE that he was quite confident that Pure had outgrown the rest of the storage market, though he said he can’t be sure until its rivals NetApp Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc. report earnings later this week.

“For contrast, we only have to look at HPE, which also announced earnings today,” McDowell said. “HPE’s storage business was down 10%.”

Despite the strong performance, investors were rattled after the company declined to provide formal guidance for the second half of the year. Pure’s stock was down more than 11% after-hours.

“Pure’s current view of fiscal Q3 outcomes, which should not be viewed as guidance, is that total revenue will be approximately flat sequentially,” the company said in a statement.

McDowell said that these kind of statements make investors nervous and result in short-term stock hits, but he said he’s not worried by the company’s longer-term prospects.

“Everything I see tells me that Pure is doing what it should to grow long-term,” McDowell said. “Charlie Giancarlo and Pure’s new CFO Kevan Krysler have a steady hand and the faith of their customers, and that goes a long way.”

Pure added several important new customers in the quarter, including Arrow Energy Co. Ltd., BidFX Ltd., Lafayette General Medical Center Inc. and Telstra Corp. Ltd.

The company also announced today an upgraded version of its FlashArray//C storage system based on QLC flash, a type of solid-memory that isn’t yet broadly deployed in data centers.

Pure said the new system is aimed at replacing traditional hybrid arrays, which are a widely used class of storage systems that combine flash with disk storage. The company’s pitch is that its hardware can help companies more efficiently run Tier 2 workloads such as backup applications that are often deployed on hybrid arrays.

Photo: SiliconANGLE