Tableau, the Seattle-based maker of data visualization software, narrowly beat its 2017 earnings expectations Thursday, giving its stock a 10 percent boost in after-hours trading. The company’s stock rested at $88.06 as of 2 p.m. PT, more than 80 percent higher than its stock price this time last year.
The company reported $877.1 million in revenue for 2017, a modest six percent year-over-year increase and higher than the $868.34 million analysts expected. It also reported earnings of $0.27 per share, compared to an expected $0.18 per share.
But the star of the show was the company’s subscription offerings, which raked in $195.5 million in 2017. That’s a 235 percent year-over-year increase.
When Tableau announced its shift to focus on subscription services at the end of 2016, it predicted taking a loss in the short run — but it seems to be over that valley and climbing once again sooner than expected.
“Customers continued to embrace our subscription offerings in the fourth quarter with over half of our license bookings now recognized ratably,” Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky said in the company’s earnings release. “With the lower upfront cost and reduced risk that subscription licensing offers to customers, a record number of organizations are turning to Tableau as the mission-critical analytics platform for their data needs.”
Under Selipsky, who became the company’s second-ever CEO in 2016, the company has shifted its focus to Tableau Online, which expanded to AWS in late 2016. Selling subscriptions, rather than perpetual licenses, lets Tableau make its products more available to a variety of organizations and easier to use for thousands of employees at large businesses, the company said. Selipsky said in a previous call with reporters that the model would provide the company a more stable revenue stream.
Tableau released monthly subscription prices for all of its data visualization products in April.
Tableau also beat expectations for the fourth quarter — it reported income per share of $0.12, compared to an expected $0.03, and $249.4 million in revenue, compared to an expected $240 million. However, its revenue was down 1 percent that quarter, year-over-year.
