What happened

Shares of MongoDB (MDB 0.81%) were skyrocketing Friday after the cloud-based database specialist outperformed Wall Street's expectations on both the top and bottom lines in its fiscal second quarter and offered better-than-expected guidance. As of 12:59 p.m. EDT, the stock was up 24.7%.

A upward-trending bar chart made of clouds

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

In its fiscal second quarter, which ended July 31, revenue at MongoDB rose 44% to $198.7 million, ahead of estimates at $184.2 million. That was also its fastest growth rate in five quarters. Growth was once again driven by Atlas, the company's fully managed cloud database, which saw sales jump 83% and made up 56% of total revenue in the period.

Further down the income statement, gross margin held steady at 69%, and adjusted operating loss widened slightly from $10.2 million in the year-ago quarter to $11.5 million. On an adjusted basis, MongoDB reported a loss of $0.24 per share. That was worse than its loss of $0.22 per share in the year-ago quarter, but better than analysts' consensus forecast for a loss of $0.39 per share.

MongoDB also passed 200 million cumulative downloads of its product with more than 75 million downloads in the past year. 

"MongoDB's second quarter results were exceptionally strong across the board, highlighted by Atlas revenue growth of 83%," CEO Dev Ittycheria said. "Our performance reflects the desire of nearly every business to use a modern application data platform that enables them to accelerate the pace of their digital innovation agenda."

Ittycheria also touted the launch of MongoDB 5.0, which offers improvements like Atlas Serverless, Live Resharding, and Versioned API. 

Now what

For its fiscal Q3, the company expects revenue in the $202 million to $204 million range, which at the midpoint would be a rise of 34.6% year over year. The current analyst consensus forecast is for revenue of $198.3 million.

For the full year, management anticipates revenue of $805 million to $811 million, up 37% at the midpoint. Overall, MongoDB's fiscal Q2 results show that it's continuing to make strides in its growth plan, with the acceleration of Atlas sales being an especially promising sign.