MongoDB Inc. posted revenue that beat expectations as well as a smaller-than-expected loss in its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results today.

The database firm also provided strong revenue guidance for the next quarter and year ahead, sending its stock a couple of percentage points higher in after-hours trading.

The company reported a loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 33 cents per share on revenue of $171 million, up 38% from the same period one year ago. Still, that was better than expected, with analysts looking for a wider loss of 39 cents per share on $157 million in revenue. For its full fiscal year 2021, MongoDB reported revenue rose 40% from a year ago, to $590.4 million.

MongoDB Chief Executive Dev Ittycheria (pictured) said the company delivered a “strong finish” to what was an “incredibly successful year” overall. “Our performance in fiscal 2021 demonstrated the increasingly strategic role MongoDB’s modern application data platform plays in enabling customers to use software and data to derive a competitive advantage,” he said.

Looking ahead, Ittycheria added that he believes the company is well-positioned to benefit from the ongoing shift to the cloud and the need for enterprises to build smarter and more powerful applications. “We are confident in our ability to keep delivering strong growth at scale,” he said.

MongoDB stands to benefit because it has built one of the most powerful document-orientated databases around. It’s used to power numerous types of data-hungry applications. Developers like MongoDB because it’s relatively easy to use and can be used to store lots of information formats.

MongoDB also sells a cloud-hosted version of its database called MongoDB Atlas, as well as a mobile version that’s known as MongoDB Realm. MongoDB Atlas was notably a bright spot for the company, with sales rising 66% to account for 49% of its total fourth-quarter revenue, officials said.

During the quarter the company made a key addition to its arsenal with the launch of its Realm Sync managed service, which helps to synchronize data between MongoDB Atlas and MongoDB Realm. That, analysts said, will make it possible for developers to build more responsive mobile applications with superior offline functions.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said that MongoDB’s latest earnings report shows that it’s on a solid growth path. That’s no surprise in itself, he said, because all software vendors that offer a platform across the various public cloud platforms have done well recently due to a desire from enterprises to avoid cloud-lock in.

“MongoDB provides a next-generation computing platform for the document database market and it is in high demand, so it makes sense for the company to expand its sales and marketing activities to compete in global markets and gain market share,” Mueller said. “But it needs to keep an eye on its path to profitability, which went backwards in the last full year. As much as enterprises want a documents database offering that’s independent of cloud providers, they also want to get it from a company that’s viable in the long term.”

MongoDB’s quest for profitability is likely to take some time though. For the next quarter, the company issued guidance saying it expects a loss of between 36 and 39 cents per share on revenue of $167 million to $170 million. Wall Street had earlier forecast a smaller loss of 27 cents per share on somewhat lower revenue of $167 million.

For the full year MongoDB is eyeing revenue of $745 million to $765 million, versus Wall Street’s forecast of $737 million in sales.

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