Tableau tops Q4 earnings targets, hires new sales EVP

Tableau published fourth quarter and end of year results after the bell on Thursday.

The Seattle-based data visualization firm reported a net loss of $21.1 million, or 28 cents per share.

Non-GAAP earnings were 26 cents per share on top of $250.7 million in revenue, up 24 percent year over year.

Wall Street was expecting just 13 cents per share with revenue of $230.3 million.

Tableau’s shares shot up more than 15 percent in after-market trading.

Tableau has spent the last year or more moving to a subscription-based sales model, and it’s now got the numbers to show for it. For 2016, Tableau added 15,000 new customer accounts, closed 1,549 deals each worth more than $100,000 — all in all producing $482 million in license revenue, up 14 percent annually.

Total 2016 revenue was $826.9 million, up 27 percent year over year, while net losses reached $144.4 million.

“We are seeing strong demand from enterprises that want to deploy Tableau more broadly across their organization, from thousands to tens of thousands of users,” said Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky. “Our enterprise customers are making Tableau a mission-critical platform as data becomes more and more essential to their success.”

In a separate release, Tableau announced that it hired Dan Miller as its new EVP of worldwide field sales. Miller is described as a 30-year enterprise software vet, with past roles at Oracle, Juniper Networks, HP and Sun Microsystems. Most recently he led strategy, sales and operations for Oracle’s ISV/OEM and Java businesses.

For the first quarter of 2017, Wall Street expects Tableau to kick off the year a bit slower with a loss at four cents per share and revenue of $191.7 million.