Open-source database company MongoDB Inc. showed strong growth again as it posted financial results today that beat expectations on both earnings and revenue, sending its stock higher after-hours.

The company reported a fiscal first-quarter loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 25 cents per share. Sales for the period rose 39% from a year ago, to $181.6 million. Analysts had been expecting the company to report a bigger loss of 36 cents per share on revenue of $169.8 million.

Breaking down the numbers, MongoDB’s subscription revenue rose 40%, to $174.6 million, while service revenue rose 29%, to $7.1 million. Investors responded warmly to the report, as MongoDB’s stock rose 6% in late trading.

MongoDB sells an enterprise-grade version of the open-source MongoDB database. Known as one of the most powerful document-oriented databases around, it’s used for numerous types of data-hungry applications. Developers especially like MongoDB because the database is said to be easy to use and can store information in many different formats.

The company has also created a special version of MongoDB for customers who prefer to run it in the cloud, called MongoDB Atlas, as well as a mobile version known as MongoDB Realm.

MongoDB has been pushing MongoDB Atlas as part of its transition to a subscription-based software-as-a-service business model. Over the years it has grown steadily and has now become the company’s flagship platform.

“Five years ago this month we launched Atlas with the idea that customers would value a fully managed MongoDB database as a service offering,” said MongoDB Chief Executive Dev Ittycheria (pictured). “Today Atlas is nearly a $400 million revenue run rate business, and represents for the first time the majority of our revenue.”

MongoDB is still unprofitable, posting a net loss for the quarter of $64 million today. But with its revenue consistently growing at a double-digit pace every quarter, analysts say, it might not be long until the company gets into the black.

“MongoDB is doing well, addressing what enterprises want, which is cross-cloud offerings like MongoDB Atlas,” said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. “It is showing good cost control with revenue up $50 million and the loss increasing by just $10 million or so. MongoDB may be ready to start turning a profit. The next few quarters will show.”

Ittycheria added that the company’s results show “strong validation” for a modern data application platform that can power flexible and scalable apps across a broad range of use cases.

For the second quarter MongoDB offered cautious guidance, saying it expects a loss of 40 to 43 cents per share on revenue of $180 million to $183 million. Wall Street had forecast a 32-cent-per-share loss on revenue of $180.9 million.

Photo: SiliconANGLE