Shares of the database company MongoDB Inc. trended lower in extended trading today after it could offer only weak guidance for the current quarter.

The company reported a fiscal fourth-quarter net loss of $55.5 million, down slightly from the $64.4 million loss it delivered one year ago. Earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation came to 86 cents per share, crushing the Street’s forecast of 46 cents per share. Revenue for the period jumped 27%, to $458 million, also ahead of the Street’s forecast of $437 million.

But the strong results were undone by MongoDB’s cautious guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2025. The company said it expects revenue of between $436 million and $440 million, below the Street’s consensus estimate of $452 million. For the full year, MongoDB sees revenue of between $1.9 billion and $1.93 billion, compared with the Street’s target of $2.04 billion.

MongoDB’s stock cratered, falling more than 9% in after-hours trading.

The company is the creator of the document-oriented MongoDB database, which is used to power a wide range of data-intensive applications. In addition to the on-premises version of its software, it sells a cloud-native version called MongoDB Atlas, which is its flagship product these days, accounting for the bulk of its revenue. There’s also a popular mobile version known as MongoDB Realm. All three products are popular with developers as they’re easy to use and support many different data formats.

Sales of the subscription-based Atlas product increased 34% in the quarter, while overall subscription revenue jumped 28%, to $445 million.

MongoDB credits its recent growth with the rise of generative artificial intelligence workloads, which require a powerful underlying database platform to obtain seamless access to not only structured data, but also unstructured information such as images, written notes and audio files. To cater to this demand, MongoDB has built in vector search functionality that enables unstructured data to be stored as vectors, or numerical representations, making such information easy for generative AI models to read.

MongoDB President and Chief Executive Dev Ittycheria (pictured) said the company ended fiscal 2024 on a particularly strong note. “We continue to see healthy new workload wins as MongoDB’s developer data platform increasingly becomes the standard for modern application development,” he insisted.

The CEO’s comments were backed by hard numbers, with MongoDB reporting a 17% increase in customers, to 47,800 at the end of the quarter. Of those, 2,052 pay more than $100,000 annually, up 24% from a year earlier.

Ittycheria said the company plans to continue investing in its products to capitalize on the long-term growth opportunities provided by AI. “MongoDB’s flexible and scalable platform will be critical for any organization looking to leverage artificial intelligence to build smarter and more impactful applications easier than ever,” he added.

MongoDB’s lower guidance almost certainly prompted the after-hours stock selloff. Considering the stock was up 97% over the last year, some investors no doubt decided that today was the perfect time to cash in.

Photo: MongoDB