Enterprise search technology firm Elastic N.V. delivered fiscal third-quarter financial results today that beat analysts’ expectations, sending its stock slightly higher in late trading.

The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $56.7 million, yielding a loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 12 cents per share. That was offset by high revenue growth, though, with sales rising 43% in the quarter, to $223.9 million.

Wall Street had anticipated a wider loss of 20 cents per share on sales of $209.71 million, so it was a pretty impressive showing for Elastic overall.

Elastic is best known for its tools that are based on the popular open-source Elasticsearch platform. It’s used by enterprises to store, search and analyze massive volumes of both structured and unstructured data quickly, in nearly real time. The platform serves as the underlying engine for millions of applications that have complex search features and requirements.

However, Elasticsearch also has its fingers in observability, with tools that are used to track network performance, and in threat detection. It’s these businesses that are proving to be the real growth engines nowadays.

The company was keen to highlight the growth of its cloud-based business. It reported total cloud revenue of $80.4 million in the quarter, up 79% from a year ago. Meanwhile, Elastic’s total subscription customer count came to 17,900, compared with just 13,800 in the year ago period.

Elastic Chief Executive Ash Kulkarni (pictured), who surprisingly replaced the company’s founder Shay Bannon in January, said the cloud business now accounts for 36% of its overall revenue.

“We delivered another record quarter and exceeded our revenue expectations, fueled by increasing consumption trends in Elastic Cloud,” he said. “I look forward to us executing against the large and growing market opportunity ahead of us, particularly in cloud.”

Elastic’s rapidly growing cloud business might explain the company’s confidence for the coming quarter. It said it sees revenue in a range of $230 million to $232 million, well ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of $224.1 million. Elastic also forecast a loss of 20 to 24 cents per share, versus Wall Street’s estimate of a 26-cent loss.

The bullish guidance helped Elastic’s stock make up lost ground, gaining 1.5% in after-hours trading after slipping more than 5% earlier in the day.

Photo: SiliconANGLE