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Tableau revenues drop due to weak UK sales, fingers sales bods not Brexit

We're going to have shoulder this ourselves, admits chief exec

Life could be better for data-visualisation business Tableau - today it reported weaker-than-expected Q3 revenues and placed the blame at the feet of its under-performing UK team, rather than the Brexit.

The company had issued guidance to investors that it would grow revenues to $214m but fell short, bringing in only $206m for the three months ending 30 September. Gross profit was up to $182m from $150m year-on-year for Q3, operating expenses of $211m left the company with a $29m operating loss, without adjustments.

The latest financials follows Tableau rolling out a new software version, Tableau 10, and beginning to shift its licensing structure.

Tableau licences, now offered more on a termly basis rather than perpetual, was not blamed for the revenue shortfall, however. Christian Chabot, CEO and co-founder, told investors, despite the business generating its highest-ever quarterly revenues, they fell below what the company had forecasted, and did so for two reasons.

Chabot admitted the business had not closed deals with large enterprise customers, though he hoped such deals could be banked in the next quarter, and that trade in EMEA, particularly Britain, was more sluggish than expected.

"While international revenue grew... our EMEA business, notably the UK, underperformed our expectations."

Asked by financial analysts on a conference call if the UK's underperformance had more to do with regional macroeconomic weakness or Tableau's execution in the nation, the CEO said:

"It'd be nice to just kind of blame it on the uncertainty over there," referencing the post-Brexit referendum situation, but added: "I'd put it more on ourselves and our own execution."

Not that the "uncertain environment" doesn't affect the company at all. "Currency alone is a headwind and so that's there," added Chabot, "but I don't want to take the easy [way] out on that and just sort of blame macro."

The message is starkly different from Tableau's last quarter, when its sales team earned so much commission that Thomas Walker, the Seattle-based company's chief financial officer, told investors the business had "overachieved on bookings attainment".

Altogether the company opened 3,600 new customer accounts, including the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service in the US Treasury Department, increasing the total number of customer accounts worldwide to more than 50,000. ®

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