Company is seeing ‘significantly increased business activity’
Shares of C3.ai Inc. were shooting more than 20% higher in Monday afternoon trading after the software company said it expects that it exceeded its prior revenue target for the just-completed quarter.
C3.ai AI, +23.43% expects to report $72.1 million to $72.4 million in revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter, whereas its prior forecast was for $70 million to $72 million. Analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting $71.1 million.
“Overall business environment for enterprise AI is more active than we have seen since the company’s inception and seems to be accelerating,” the company said in a release. “Interest in applying predictive analytics to business processes has never been greater.”
C3.ai further cited “significantly increased business activity” during the period, closing 43 deals, including 19 pilots that were initiated in the fiscal fourth quarter.
“We view management’s commentary, along with the business momentum, favorably as the company continues its transition to its consumption-based pricing model,” Piper Sandler analyst Arvind Ramnani wrote in a note to clients.
The company expects to post a narrower loss than it originally anticipated for the period. It now expects a $23.7 million to $23.9 million adjusted loss from operations, whereas its prior outlook called for a loss of $24 million to $28 million on the metric.
Shares of C3.ai, which makes enterprise software for artificial intelligence, have surged 115% so far this year amid high enthusiasm for AI technology. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.30% is up about 8% over the course of 2023.