Big-data company Alteryx Inc.’s shares fell sharply in extended trading today after it delivered mixed results in its first-quarter earnings report and offered weak guidance for the months ahead.

The report came as Alteryx announced a “workforce reduction plan” in which it will lay off 11% of its staff. These Alteryx layoffs are expected to have a substantial impact on the company’s operations and future growth plans.

The company reported a first-quarter net loss of $89 million, up slightly from a loss of $105.6 million a year earlier. Losses before certain costs such as stock compensation came to 19 cents per share, ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of a 26-cent-per-share loss. However, while revenue grew 26% to $199.1 million, it fell short of Wall Street’s target of $200.1 million.

Alteryx is a provider of tools for extract, transform and load, otherwise known as ETL. Its products are used by enterprises to prepare massive volumes of information for analysis. The company’s Analytics Cloud platform provides baked-in connectivity to business intelligence tools such as Experian and Tableau, and features capabilities around data cleansing, data mining and geospatial analytics.

Chief Executive Mark Anderson (pictured) insisted the company had a “solid first quarter,” pointing out that its annualized recurring revenue grew by 25% from a year earlier, thanks to robust growth with larger enterprise customers. “Our key strategic go-to-market initiatives and our rapid platform innovation are effectively enabling the business to demonstrate strong resilience in an increasingly dynamic macro backdrop,” he said.

Regarding the layoffs, Alteryx said they will primarily affect its sales and marketing and general and administrative organizations. The company is said to have about 2,900 full-time employees, so the plan translates to about 320 job cuts. Alteryx said it expects to incur charges related to the layoffs of $11 million to $13 million, though they will ultimately help to reduce its operating costs, improve operating margins and help it to achieve profitability faster.

Mass layoffs are normally well-received by investors, but in the case of the Alteryx layoffs, they did little to boost optimism about the company’s immediate prospects. The stock had gained just over 1% during the regular trading session, on an up day for many tech stocks, but fell more than 12% in extended trading.

No doubt the selloff was influenced by Alteryx’s weak outlook. Looking to the second quarter, Alteryx said it sees a loss of between 65 and 699 cents per share on revenue of between $180 million to $184 million. Both of those numbers were well below Wall Street’s forecasts of a 41-cent-per-share loss on sales of $205.1 million.

Photo: Alteryx