Why Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. Shares Dropped Today

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. fell 19% Tuesday after the customer experience software provider turned in a surprising first-quarter loss.

So what: Quarterly revenue rose 8% year over year to $79.4 million, which resulted in an adjusted net loss of $0.4 million, or $0.02 per diluted share. By comparison, analysts were expecting net income of $0.01 per share on sales of $79.67 million.

Now what: Interactive Intelligence Group CEO Dr. Donald Brown explained: "As we increasingly shift to a higher proportion of cloud-based orders and have more revenue deferred to future quarters, our reported short-term profitability is affected. But we look beyond this and remain committed to making investments that drive the growth of our business, particularly with our cloud-based offerings targeting the highest growth segment of our market."

To be sure, Interactive Intelligence doesn't recognize cloud-based revenue upfront, which affects its profits over the short term as the company shifts to a more predictable recurring revenue model. Considering cloud-based orders jumped 165% year over year and accounted for 59% of total orders -- compared with 31% in the same year-ago period -- that should bode well for Interactive Intelligence shareholders down the road.

Still, the stock doesn't exactly look cheap, trading around 114 times next year's estimated earnings. But if you already liked Interactive Intelligence Group before today, I don't think its surprise loss should change your opinion of the stock.