Carbon Black Inc. (CBLK) recently announced its financial results for the first quarter, marking the very first quarterly report since going public in May.
The cybersecurity company reported a loss of $60.6 million, or $5.38 per share for the three months ended March 31, as compared to a loss of $24.1 million, or $2.40 per share in the comparable period last year. On an adjusted basis, it lost 98 cents per share, narrower than a loss of $1.27 per share forecasted by analysts.
Revenue for the quarter came in at $48.4 million, up from $35.9 million in the same period, a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were looking for revenue of $48 million.
President and CEO Patrick Morley said the company started 2018 with solid financial and operational results underlined by 195 percent growth in cloud revenue. Morley added that the quarterly performance was driven by increasing demand for Carbon Black’s next-generation endpoint security platform, called the Cb Predictive Security Cloud, which protects users from most advanced cyber threats, including new kinds of attacks that are not detectable by legacy AV products.
Looking forward, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company expects adjusted loss in the range of 42 cents to 41 cents per share for the second quarter, narrower than a loss of 43 cents per share predicted by analysts. Revenue is expected to come between $48.5 million and $49 million. Analysts on average had forecasted revenue of $48.2 million.
The company’s customer base continues to rise. It ended the latest quarter with 4,006 customers, well above 2,648 in the comparable quarter last year, and up from 3,739 at the end of the preceding quarter. Growth was mainly driven by high demand across its product portfolio and addition of customers from a wide range of industries.
