Expectations were high going into MongoDB's (MDB +1.10%) fiscal 2019 third quarter (which ended Oct. 31). Since the company's IPO in October 2017, the stock had soared over 160% -- even in the face of the recent market turbulence. MongoDB delivered on Wall Street's lofty expectations and more, causing the stock to surge an additional 8% on the first day of trading after its earnings release on Dec. 4.
MongoDB delivered across a variety of metrics in its better-than-expected performance. Let's look at a few that show just how good a quarter the company produced.
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1. Revenue jumped 57%
The company has made a practice of delivering expectation-smashing revenue gains and this quarter was no different. Revenue grew to $64.98 million, up 57% year over year, and far exceeding the $59.5 million MongoDB's management had forecast at the midpoint of its guidance. It also topped analysts' consensus estimates, which were calling for $60.25 million on the top line.
2. Adjusted loss per share declined 32%
MongoDB also produced lower-than-expected losses. Its non-GAAP loss per share of $0.30 was much improved from the $0.44-per-share losses it incurred in the prior-year quarter. It was much better than the loss per share of $0.39 the company had anticipated at the midpoint of its guidance, and the $0.40 loss expected by analysts.
3. Subscription revenue up 59%
For subscription-based businesses like cloud services, tracking not only growth in subscription revenue, but also as a percentage of total revenue can be an important indicator of the health of the company. MongoDB's subscription revenue climbed to $60.1 million, up 59% year over year, and grew to 92% of total revenue, up from 91% in the prior-year quarter.
4. MongoDB Atlas revenue soared 300%
Atlas is MongoDB's cloud-database-as-a-service offering. While the platform was only introduced in mid-2016, it has seen rapid adoption by customers. Revenue from Atlas was $14.3 million, up 300% compared with the prior-year quarter, and now accounts for 22% of the company's revenue, up from 8% in the year-ago quarter.
Earlier this month, MongoDB announced a host of updates that increased the capabilities of Atlas, some of which will enhance real-time workload processing and allow communication with the customers' virtual private clouds across private networks. The ongoing improvements to the company's products will act as an incentive for both new and existing customers.
5. Customer base grew 69%
Having the best products in the world doesn't matter if customers don't sign up to use them, but that certainly hasn't been the case for MongoDB. In the third quarter, the company's customer list grew to over 8,300 customers, up 69% year over year. The adoption was broad-based across all the major regions where MongoDB does business, including North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and Asia.
6. 120% expansion rate
In addition to landing new customers, one of the key components to MongoDB's growth strategy has been "land and expand," which involves working with the customer to get the most from its offerings, then upselling them on additional products and services. That appears to be working well for the company, as its net AR expansion rate -- the rate at which existing customers spend more money -- remained above the 120% rate for the 15th consecutive quarter. MongoDB ended the quarter with 490 customers with at least $100,000 in annual or annualized recurring revenue, up from 320 customers in the prior-year quarter.
What it means
What this illustrates is that MongoDB continues to put up growth across all the metrics that matter. Wall Street seems content to let Mongo focus on the long term, as the company continues to forgo profitability and pour any potential earnings back into the large and growing opportunity.
As a shareholder, I am happy to see MongoDB pursue market share gains in a database market that is expected to top $84 billion by 2022.
