Pure Storage posts solid Q3 sales in first report since IPO
Enterprise storage provider Pure Storage posted better-than-expected results in its first quarterly report since going public in October.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company reported an earnings loss of 18 cents per share with revenue of $131.4 million, a massive increase of 167 percent from the same period a year ago. Wall Street was bracing for a loss of 30 cents per share.
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Net losses widened from $40.4 million to $56.5 million during the same period.
Nonetheless, the company offered strong revenue guidance for the current quarter. Pure Storage now expects fourth-quarter revenue in the range of $134 million to $139 million, above Wall Street's estimate of $123.3 million.
The all-flash-firm's stock soared nearly 15 percent in early trading following the solid report.
Last night Pure Storage said it was changing the time of its earnings webcast "in response to the possible inadvertent disclosure of fiscal third-quarter financial data after the close of trading today by a third-party vendor." The report was originally scheduled for Thursday.
In a blog post, its chief executive Scott Dietzen said he was thrilled with his company's performance. He touted his firm's Q3 customer growth and its landing of high profile customers Domino's Pizza and The Boston Globe.
"We are in the right place (a $24 billion market for performance storage hardware and software) at the right time (rapidly tipping to all-flash and the cloud model) with the right platform for customers," he wrote.
"We are different from other storage companies. The Pure Storage team came together out of a shared dissatisfaction with the state of datacenter storage. We were convinced that legacy storage vendors were ill prepared to make the leap to the solid-state, cloud-centric future."
This summer, Pure Storage launched a new storage array along with new upgrade program and cloud management tools.
The new flagship product signifies how flash-based storage systems are becoming the norm in the data center -- not to mention that Pure Storage is taking on a more direct attack on IT stalwart EMC.