Experience management firm Qualtrics International Inc. today reported first-quarter revenue that beat analyst’s expectations, together with a surprise profit instead of an expected loss.

That came as the company signaled that its immediate prospects are looking good too, posting a stronger-than-expected outlook for the next quarter and raising its full-year outlook.

The company, which only went public in January and remains majority-owned by its former parent SAP SE, reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of a penny per share on revenue of $238.6 million, up 36% from a year ago and also ahead of an outlook it offered last month. Wall Street had been expecting Qualtrics to report a loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of just $227.4 million.

The report sent Qualtric’s stock surging, and it was up more than 13% in after-hours trading.

Qualtrics Chief Executive Zig Serafin (pictured) said in a statement that the first quarter performance was “outstanding” and marks a very strong start to its fiscal year. “Organizations around the world are in the middle of an important transformation — an experience transformation — and Qualtrics has never been more relevant or impactful,” he insisted.

Qualtrics sells cloud-based experience management software that companies use to collect feedback from their various stakeholders. For example, human resources departments rely on Qualtrics to ask employees their opinions on topics such as the effectiveness of the new hire onboarding process. Product teams also use Qualtrics to measure customer satisfaction and find new market opportunities.

Serafin told ZDNet in an interview that Qualtrics’ platform was becoming as important to some of its customers as their human resources and customer relationship management systems. “I’d say over the last year, the number of CEO-level conversations that I’m having personally, that our company is having with people in the C-Suite, is a step-function change,” he added.

A lot of Qualtrics’ key numbers looked strong. Subscription revenue growth rose 46%, to $186.9 million, while the company also saw a 35% jump in the number of customers that spent more than $100,000 on its software. And its remaining performance obligation, which is a measure of backlog, was up 77% year-over-year, to $1.196 billion.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said Qualtrics had a very strong performance and that the experience management category was clearly growing fast. But despite investors apparent enthusiasm for Qualtrics, he warned that its costs have more than doubled year-over-year.

“It certainly seems to be more expensive doing business standing alone than as part of SAP,” Mueller said. “But Qualtrics does have ambitions to reduce its losses, which is a good start. It also needs to keep investing into product, and the doubling of its R&D efforts is a positive sign.”

Qualtrics said that it sees a loss of one to three cents on revenue of $240 million to $242 million in the second quarter, better than Wall Street’s forecast of a four-cent loss on revenue of $229 million.

For the full year, Qualtrics said it’s expecting revenue of $980 million to $984 million, up from a range of $950 million to $954 million it offered a one month ago. It’s also well above Wall Street’s consensus of $954 million in full-year revenue.

Photo: SiliconANGLE