Shares in Splunk Inc. surged over 10% in late trading today after the big-data company delivered strong beats on earnings, revenue and outlook in its latest quarterly earnings report.

For the quarter that ended July 31, Splunk reported adjusted earnings per share of 71 cents on revenue of $911 million, up 16% year-over-year. Analysts had been expecting earnings per share of 46 cents on revenue of $889.23 million.

Splunk’s overall revenue growth was driven by cloud revenue, which was up 29% year-over-year in the quarter to $445 million. The increasing levels of business also saw annual recurring revenue up 16% year-over-year, to $3.858 billion. Splunk ended the quarter with 834 customers with a total annual recurring revenue of more than $1 million, up by 111 from the same time last year.

Some of Splunk’s success had been driven by savings, including the company’s decision in February to cut about 4% of its workforce. Operating expenses fell 2% year-over-year in the quarter and 3% on an adjusted basis. Cash flow also improved, up 247% year-over-year, to $827 million.

Recent business highlights include Splunk launching a generative artificial intelligence assistant to tame observability data in July. Designed for security operations, information technology operations and engineering teams, Splunk AI is aimed at enhancing human decision-making and threat response with assistive experiences.

Splunk also announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft Corp. to build Splunk’s enterprise security and observability offerings on Microsoft Azure. As part of the partnership, Splunk solutions will be available for purchase on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

“Splunk delivered another solid quarter, demonstrating the incredible value organizations worldwide gain from unified security and observability,” Gary Steele, president and chief executive of Splunk, said in the company’s earnings release. “Through our ongoing focus on accelerating innovation and harnessing AI, we unveiled many important advancements during the quarter to help customers strengthen their overall digital resilience and security posture.”

For its fiscal third quarter of 2024, Splunk said that it expected revenue of between $1.02 billion and $1.035 billion, higher than the $980 million that analysts were expecting. For its full fiscal year, the company expects revenue of $3.925 billion and $3.95 billion, versus an expected $3.9 billion.

Ryan Kovar, distinguished security strategist and leader of SURGe at Splunk, spoke with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s livestreaming studio, in July to discus how Splunk built its platform around enterprise resilience and data security.

Photo: Splunk