Twilio Inc. saw its share price rocket by more than six percent after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that easily beat Wall Street’s expectations.

The cloud communications platform-as-a-service company reported a net loss of $20.2 million, or 20 cents per share, in the fourth quarter. Earnings after certain costs such as stock compensation amounted to a loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $115.2 million, which was up 41 percent compared to a year ago. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 6 cents per share on revenue of $103.7 million.

Not surprisingly, investors were delighted with that performance, bidding up Twilio’s share price by about 6 percent in after-hours trading, to $28.10 per share.

For the whole of 2017, Twilio pulled in revenue of $399 million, up 44 percent from one year ago. The company posted an adjusted loss per share of 19 cents.

Twilio also added more than 12,000 new customer accounts during 2017. The company said it ended the year with 48,979 active customers, up from 36,606 at the end of 2016.

“My excitement lies in the foundations we’ve laid for the next ten years of Twilio,” Twilio cofounder and Chief Executive Jeff Lawson (pictured) said in prepared remarks. “We are poised for a stellar year ahead.”

Lawson’s enthusiasm was shared by Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc., who said that Twilio’s continued success validates the idea that communication in its broadest sense is key for next-generation software applications. “As enterprises and independent software vendors build them and need to make smartphones do something, Twilio grows,” Mueller said. “The company is about much more today than just making smartphones ring.”

Despite the generally optimistic mood for Twilio’s prospects going forward, the company did have one piece of news that might concern some investors. Twilio said in its press release that Chief Financial Officer Lee Kirkpatrick was leaving the company after six years in the job. The search for a replacement will begin “shortly,” but it could be a long one as the company said it expects to make an appointment “before the end of the year.”

The departure of senior executives can sometimes be a red flag, but in this case Mueller said that Kirkpatrick’s decision to quit was not a worrying sign as the company still has plenty of talent on its books. “Executives always change and with Sara Varni, who was recently appointed Twilio’s new chief marketing officer, and Ron Huddleston, chief partners officer, they have got two industry veterans. Huddleston is a channel/partner veteran, and so I’d expect more in that direction.”

Twilio’s profit guidance for the first quarter of 2018 is a little lower than analysts’ forecasts, but the topline estimate beats the consensus. The company said it expects a first-quarter loss of between 6 and 7 cents per share on revenue of $115 million to $117 million. Wall Street analysts expect a loss of about 5 cents per share on revenue of $108.2 million.

Image: JD Lasica/Flickr