Experience management company Qualtrics International Inc. reported its fourth-quarter financial results today, beating expectations on revenue but falling short on profit.

However, its stock rose almost 14% in late trading following a strong forecast for the current quarter.

The company posted a net loss of $306.1 million for the quarter, resulting in a seven-cent-per-share loss. That compared with an $11 million loss one year ago. Revenue for the period came to $316 million, up 48% from a year ago.

Wall Street had been modeling a loss of 2 cents per share on revenue of $298 million.

Qualtrics Chief Executive Zig Serafin (pictured) said the company had an “outstanding quarter” that capped off a year of record growth. “Not only did we cross the $1 billion revenue milestone, but we’re accelerating past it, as experience management becomes even more critical to business success,” he added.

Qualtrics is a subsidiary of SAP SE that sells a cloud-based platform companies use to collect feedback from stakeholders such as customers and employees. A human resources department can use it to ask employees their opinions on things such as the effectiveness of a new-hire onboarding process. Product teams, meanwhile, use Qualtrics to assess customer satisfaction and identify new market opportunities.

The company sees itself as the leader of a new “experience management” industry that it reckons is becoming of critical importance to many enterprises’ human resource departments and customer relationships teams.

Qualtrics’ strong growth would suggest it has a point. In fact, its rate of growth has been accelerating with today’s 48% revenue increase, up from 41% in the prior quarter. Also in the fourth quarter, Qualtrics’ subscription revenue jumped 61% year-over-year, up from 49% growth three months ago.

Qualtrics also reported its net dollar retention rate, which is a measure of how much customers spend on average versus what they spent a year before, increased to 128%, up from 125% in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, its number of customers that deliver over $1 million in revenue annually rose 93% from a year ago, to 143.

For the current quarter, Qualtrics said it sees revenue of $324 million to $326 million, with earnings per share in a range of breakeven to a two-cent loss. Wall Street had forecast sales of $315 million for the quarter and a penny-per-share loss.

For its full fiscal 2022, Qualtrics is looking at sales of $1.402 billion to $1.406 billion, which is well ahead of the $1.359 billion forecast.

Photo: SiliconANGLE