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Hortonworks Inc. beat Wall Street expectations on both revenues and profits in its first quarter and guided expectations higher for both its current quarter and the full year.

Revenue jumped 41 percent from a year ago, to $79.1 million, ahead of analysts’ average forecast of $75.3 million.

An even more important milestone for investors and customers alike is that the company reported $8 million in positive cash flow for the second straight quarter. Executives expressed confidence in their ability to achieve a positive operating cash flow for the year, in contrast to the vague promises they made a quarter ago that prompted in a 12 percent one-day drop in Hortonworks’ shares.

The loss of 20 cents per share was 7 cents better than consensus estimates. Hortonworks also raised second-quarter revenue estimates to $80 million, against consensus estimates of $78.6 million. And it upped its full-year revenue guidance to between $325 and $330 million, from previous estimates of $322 million to $327 million. “We are very comfortable with our opportunities going forward,” said Chief Executive Rob Bearden (pictured).

Investors initially showed modest enthusiasm for the results, which were inadvertently released an hour before the stock markets closed. Hortonworks shares rose just under 1 percent in late trading and were unchanged in after-hours trading.

Update: However, on Wednesday, investors appeared even less enthused, as shares fell 4.6 percent. “Demand metrics remain intact, though large deal count was down year over year, which likely contributed to billings downside for the quarter,” Mizuho Bank Ltd. analyst Abhey Lamba wrote in a note to clients. “In all, we think the story remains intact; however, we think shares remain fairly valued.”

Bearden was particularly enthusiastic about the performance of Hortonworks DataFlow, the streaming data platform that has been a hit with customers. “It’s a unique platform designed to operate at the edge and scale with endpoints where data is created,” he said. Of the 10 deals of over $1 million in value that were closed in the quarter, half included HDF.

The CEO also trumpeted the growth of Hortonworks’ international business, which was up 68 percent over the same period last year. Half of the $1 million-plus deals closed in the quarter were with overseas customers, the company reported. Hortonworks also renewed a three-year deal with Microsoft Corp. to power that company’s HDInsight cloud big data platform and “has established a great working model with IBM,” which resells Hortonworks’ Hadoop distribution, Bearden said.

Cumulatively, the company closed 52 deals of over $1 million over the past 12 months and has 59 customers paying more than $1 million in annual subscription fees. Combined with the positive operating cash flows, the growing number of large customers points toward a company building long-term stability.

“We find ourselves moving well beyond a company building a Hadoop distribution to one that’s defining next-generation data platforms with our customers,” Bearden said. However, he noted that there’s plenty of growth left in Hadoop, which is increasingly displacing legacy databases in customer sites. “As long as the volume of data continues to increase and organizations see the value of consolidating their legacy platforms on Hadoop, there’s an expanding opportunity for us,” Bearden said.

Operating margin before certain costs such as stock compensation was a negative 18 percent for the first quarter of 2018, a significant improvement over the negative 54 percent margins reported in the same period last year. The company said operating margins would continue to improve in 2018 to between negative 23 percent and negative 18 percent.

Photo: SiliconANGLE