Splunk Posts Narrower-Than-Expected Q1 Loss, Lifts Revenue Outlook

reported a narrower-than-expected loss for the first quarter and lifted its revenue forecast for the year. For FY16, the company now projects revenue of $610 million to $614 million, versus earlier forecast of $600 million. For the current quarter, Splunk expects revenue of $138 million to $140 million, versus analysts' estimates of $136.38 million. The San Francisco, California-based company posted a quarterly loss of $71.2 million, or $0.57 per share, versus a year-ago loss of $50.8 million, or $0.43 per share. Excluding items, the company lost $0.01 per share. Its revenue climbed 46 percent year-over-year to $125.7 million. However, analysts were expecting a loss of $0.03 per share on revenue of 118.21 million. The average estimate among 30 Estimize users was for a loss of $0.01 per share and revenue of $121.67 million. License revenue surged 40 percent to $71.9 million. GAAP operating loss was $71.0 million in the quarter, while non-GAAP operating loss came in at $0.7 million. GAAP operating margin was negative 56.5 percent, while non-GAAP operating margin was negative 0.6 percent in the first quarter. "Our customers are moving towards enterprise-wide adoption of our products and solutions for a growing set of use cases," said Godfrey Sullivan, Chairman and CEO. "Q1 was a strong quarter and we appreciate and thank our 9,500 customers, which now include 80 of the Fortune 100. We welcomed a record number of new customers to Splunk Cloud driven by the compelling value delivered by our solutions across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments." Splunk shares fell 3.12 percent to $68.85 in the after-hours trading session.