What happened
Shares of Teradata (TDC -1.28%) surged as much as 65.9% on Friday, following a great earnings report on Thursday evening. By 12:20 p.m. EST today, shares of the provider of database analytics software had cooled down to a still-impressive gain of 40.2%.
So what
Fourth-quarter revenue fell 1% year over year to $491 million. Within that envelope, the company's recurring revenue rose 9% to $383 million. Zooming even deeper into Teradata's revenue flows, annual recurring revenue (ARR) for public cloud services rose 165% to $106 million. Adjusted earnings jumped 73% to $0.38 per diluted share. Your average Wall Street analyst would have settled for earnings near $0.25 per share on sales in the vicinity of $475 million.
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Now what
Teradata is moving away from traditional software licenses and consulting services, focusing instead on subscription-style contracts for cloud-based services. Public cloud ARR is expected to more than double again in the next fiscal year, starting with another 165% jump in the first quarter.
Investors and analysts are embracing this effective shift toward a more profitable and easily scalable business model. It's no surprise to see Teradata's shares make a big move based on this fantastic report, although the size of the jump was greater than expected.
