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MicroStrategy’s product licenses and subscription services revenue grew 3.3% to $38.6 million in the fourth quarter (ended Dec. 31) compared to a year earlier, driven by the strong performance of the company’s cloud business, according to Phong Le, its CFO and president.

Subscription services revenue jumped 21% to $8.8 million, growth that “reflects the growing portion of our product bookings that are related to our managed cloud platform,” he told analysts on an earnings call Jan. 28.

“We’re pleased with the performance of our cloud business in the quarter,” he added.

Meanwhile, MicroStrategy’s product license revenue was roughly flat in Q4, at $29.8 million, he noted.

“Obviously we’re pretty excited about the ability to transition to the cloud,” he said during the Q&A, noting: “We are still early in that process.” The company achieved 41% growth in its cloud billings after a Q3 in which “we saw an 80% growth in cloud billings,” he pointed out.

“So, although early on, we’re starting to see good momentum” with the cloud business, he told analysts.

The company, meanwhile, continued to see strong demand for its HyperIntelligence advanced “zero-click” analytics in Q4.

HyperIntelligence “had a strong quarter in Q4,” Le told analysts, explaining: “The combination of HyperIntelligence’s ease of use and powerful actionable insights is highly differentiated and is enabling us to sign deals we believe we would have been unlikely to win several years ago.”

For example, during Q4, MicroStrategy signed “large HyperIntelligence license deals with a strategic federal government agency, as well as a major North American telco,” he said without identifying them by name.

“HyperIntelligence, as well as our entire suite of modern enterprise and analytics offerings… remain a key focus for us and we will continue investing to further broaden and enhance this solution,” he told analysts.

MicroStrategy is also “seeing positive results in our embedded business,” he said, adding: “Our position as the leading independent enterprise-grade business intelligence platform makes MicroStrategy the preferred vendor for technology partners with complex technical and business needs. During the quarter, we signed a sizable new win with a Fortune 500 customer in the financial services payments industry and also saw strong adoption with existing customers.”

The company is “now eight months into our transformation to a fully virtualized demand generation marketing and direct sales strategy,” he also said, calling it an
“ongoing process as we continue to iterate and refine best practices for generating demand virtually.” MicroStrategy continues to “see very positive returns from this transition with significant improvements in lead generation and customer engagement at a fraction of the price,” he told analysts.

One “great example of the benefits of virtual demand generation” is the company’s upcoming annual user conference, MicroStrategy World, scheduled for Feb. 3-4, he said.

“We’ve been hosting a physical event for years that typically drew 2,500 attendees,” he pointed out. However, “this year, we plan to more than quadruple that attendance and reach customers and prospects in more than 100 countries” with the virtual version of the conference that has been planned amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

“We plan on using this event to introduce our MicroStrategy 2021 product,” he told analysts. Highlights will include “significant upgrades to our modern client” offerings, including HyperIntelligence, HyperVision, Library and Dossier, along with “continued innovations in our cloud solution,” he said.

The company will also host a Bitcoin for Corporations track as part of MicroStrategy World, where “we’ll bring together luminaries in the space to talk about how other companies can use Bitcoin within their organization,” he noted.

Noting that the company has been using Bitcoin as its treasury reserve asset, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said: “We continue to believe that Bitcoin serves as the best store of value and it’s “a very attractive investment asset with more long-term appreciation potential to holding cash.”

The company, “going forward [is] going to pursue two corporate strategies,” Saylor said: “One strategy is to grow our enterprise software business. The other strategy is to acquire more bitcoin.”