Alteryx Inc., the big data analytics software firm, reported strong fourth-quarter financial results today that beat expectations.

It offered an outlook for revenue that was higher than expected too, sending its stock up more than 6% in after-hours trading.

The company reported a net loss of $37.5 million. Earnings, before certain costs such as stock compensation, came to 17 cents per share, with revenue rising 8% from a year ago, to $173.8 million for the period. Wall Street analysts had forecast Alteryx to report earnings of just 5 cents per share on sales of $166.1 million. For its full fiscal year 2021, Alteryx reported revenue rose 8% from the previous year, to $536.1 million.

The company also reported annualized recurring revenue rose 30%, to $638 million. Alteryx Chief Executive Mark Anderson (pictured) said it was the largest increase in net new ARR in the company’s history, helping it to close fiscal 2021 on a “record note.” “Closing a year of transformation, we start fiscal 2022 well-positioned to continue to drive growth and accelerate our journey to the cloud,” he added.

Alteryx sells extract, transform and Lload or ETL tools that are used to prepare companies’ data for analysis. Its platform offers baked-in connectivity to business intelligence tools such as Experian and Tableau, and features specialized capabilities such as data mining, data cleansing and geospatial analytics.

During the fourth quarter Alteryx added 247 net new customers, bringing its total customer base to 7,936, up 12% from the same time last year. The company also reported a dollar-based net expansion rate of 119%. A net expansion rate measures how much a company’s ARR has grown or shrunk over time by factoring in customer expansion as well as negative churn and downgrades.

Last month, Alteryx made a key acquisition, buying the data wrangling platform provider Trifacta Inc. for $400 million in cash. Alteryx’s plan is to combine its low-code analytics platform with Trifacta’s cloud-native capabilities, so it can offer more flexible deployment options for customers that span on-premises, cloud and multicloud.

Looking to the next quarter, Alteryx forecasts revenue of $144 million to $147 million and a loss of 58 to 61 cents per share. Wall Street is looking for revenue of $133.3 million and a 16-cent-per-share loss.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE the higher loss Alteryx is forecasting is directly related to the company’s increased costs, which he said are in danger of spiraling out of control.

Alterxy delivered solid results, powered by demand for its solutions, meaning it delivered to expectations, which is rare these days,” Mueller said. “But now management will need to watch the cost development if it’s to deliver a successful fiscal 2022.”

Image: Alteryx