Qualtrics, the subsidiary of SAP AG that brands itself as the customer experience management platform, this afternoon reported[1] Q3 revenue that topped Wall Street's expectations, and a surprise profit per share where a loss had been expected, and an outlook that was higher than consensus for both revenue and profit.
The report sent Qualtrics shares jumped 7% in late trading.
"It was an outstanding quarter," said CEO Zig Serafin in an interview with ZDNet via Zoom. "We're on a roll, that's showing up in the momentum of this business."
"And what's driving this is we are helping organizations analyze and act on the data they just can't get anywhere else."
"The information we end up enabling is like gold," added Serafin.
Serafin said he was "really proud," in particular, of the company's 49% subscription revenue growth rate in the quarter, and the 125% net dollar retention rate.
Qualtrics is known as a program for managing the interaction with customers, from first attracting customers to maintaining the relationship. Amidst what Serafin called "The Great Resignation," Qualtrics is helping companies to attract talent[2].
"More and more organizations are prioritizing an investment in an experience transformation for their business, and they're doing it on Qualtrics," Serafin told ZDNet. A strong driving factor is that "switching costs are close to zero," he said, both for customers as well as for employees.
Revenue in the three months ended in September rose 41%, year over year, to $271.6 million, yielding a net profit of a penny a share.
Analysts had been modeling $258 million in revenue and a net loss of 2 cents per share.
Qualtrics's remaining performance obligation, a measure of backlog, rose 67%, year over year, to $1.362 billion. Current RPO, for