Cloud analytics software provider Sumo Logic Inc. beat expectations with strong fiscal fourth-quarter results today, but the company’s stock promptly fell in after-hours trading after a soft sales forecast for the year ahead.

The company reported a loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 7 cents per share on revenue of $54.2 million. That was better than expected, with Wall Street analysts modeling a wider loss of 12 cents per share on lower revenue of $52.14 million.

Sumo Logic also announced its full-year results, reporting fiscal 2021 revenue of $202.6 million, up 31% from a year ago.

Sumo Logic is growing fast thanks to the popularity of its versatile cloud analytics platform that provides insights into information technology infrastructure issues and cybersecurity threats. It provides services such as log management, Amazon Web Services monitoring and Azure and Google Cloud Platform management, Kubernetes management, microservices monitoring and cloud security monitoring. The platform also lends itself to more business-oriented use cases such as customer analytics.

Sumo Logic Chief Executive Ramin Sayar (pictured) said the company saw “robust demand” for its platform among customers of all sizes and maturities. “We continue to expand our differentiated platform with investments in observability and security,” he added.

Those investments include a key acquisition announced by the company just hours before it published its earnings results. The company said today it will acquire a provider of security orchestration, automation and response software called DF Labs S.p.A. for an undisclosed price. Officials said the acquisition, which is set to close in the second quarter, will add new capabilities around threat detection, analysis, incident response and forensic investigations to the Sumo Logic platform.

Greg Martin, vice president and general manager of Sumo Logic’s Security Business Unit, said cybersecurity is moving from a human-scale problem to a machine-scale problem and that customers need a new approach. “The DFLabs team are experts in helping customers navigate this new world,” he said. “By aligning our cybersecurity expertise, customer validated and leading security portfolios, we believe we will be able to address the critical challenges our customers face as they navigate this changing threat landscape.”

The acquisition comes just a week after Sumo Logic added new observability features to its platform to help customers detect issues in AWS and Kubernetes environments.

“The company is doing well, powering the DevOps space with revenue growing at more than 30%, which is a good performance in such a fast-growing space,” Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE. “Even better to see was Sumo Logic’s good cost management, reducing its losses by a feasible clip. Now all eyes are on product and market expansion in 2021.”

With all of the updates and the strong momentum behind Sumo Logic’s platform, investors may have been expecting big things from the company as it enters its fiscal 2022. But instead they were left disappointed by some rather soft guidance for the next three months and the year ahead.

Sumo Logic said it’s expecting a first-quarter loss of 12 cents per share on revenue of between $53.2 million and $54.2 million. That compares with Wall Street’s model of a 14-cent-per-share loss on $53.4 million in revenue.

For the full year, Sumo Logic said it expects a loss of 48 to 50 cents per share on revenue of $231 million to $235 million. Wall Street had pegged the company for a 51-cent loss on revenue of $234 million.

The company’s stock is down more than 6% in after-hours trading.

Photo: SiliconANGLE