At the surface, Pivotal Software Inc (NYSE: PVTL)’s second quarter offered little reason for complaint. The metrics reported Wednesday showed top- and bottom-line beats and an outlook above consensus forecasts.

But the Street was unimpressed and unforgiving. Shares dipped nearly 28 percent after the earnings release.

An expert at William Blair said the pullback may not be unjustified.

“Billings was light and short term deferred [revenue] declined sequentially,” analyst Bhavan Suri told Benzinga. “Those (I suspect along with high expectations) are driving down the stock.”

The report highlighted a $25-million billings miss, representing 24.5-percent quarter-over-quarter decline. This compounded a decline in deferred revenue from $260.3 million to $244.7 million.

At the time of publication, shares had recovered marginally to trade down a little more than 24 percent ahead of the open at $21.85.

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