HashiCorp Inc (NASDAQ:HCP) stock fell 1.60% (As on December 12, 11:38:57 AM UTC-4, Source: Google Finance) after Derrick Wood from TD Cowen downgraded the company to Market Perform from Outperform with a price target of $23, down from $28, following a cRPO and billings miss and management still modeling a sharp second half deceleration. Macro headwinds are showing no signs of fading and the firm thinks growth visibility will remain highly constrained for at least a few quarters. Investors are no doubt concerned, however, by the company’s slowing revenue growth. Until recently, HashiCorp had regularly delivered growth of more than 20%, but it isn’t doing so now. One reason for that might be that it’s struggling to squeeze as much money from its customers as it was doing in the past.

Meanwhile, the company gave somewhat disappointing guidance for Q4, which was only in line with Wall Street’s estimates. The company for the third quarter reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of three cents per share, beating the Street’s estimate of a four-cent-per-share loss. Revenue came to $146.1 million, ahead of the $143.3 million forecast. But despite beating expectations, the company remains unprofitable, racking up a net loss of $39.5 million for the quarter, though down from a $72 million net loss one year earlier. The company is at least adding new customers. It ended the quarter with 4,354 total customers, up from 3,648 one year earlier. Of those, 877 generate more than $100,000 in annual recurring revenue, up from 760 a year ago. During the quarter, HashiCorp announced its intentions to acquire a company called BluBracket Inc., which develops software that can identify and fix insecure code before it’s launched. The software is said to be especially good at catching so-called hardcoded secrets, which include any passwords that an application may store, encryption keys and the authentication tokens that workloads use to verify one another’s security before exchanging data. HashiCorp said the plan is to integrate BluBracket’s software with its open-source secret management offering, called Vault.

Looking to the fourth quarter, HashiCorp said it sees revenue of between $148 million and $150 million, the midpoint of which is squarely in line with the Street’s forecast of $149 million. The company also forecast earnings of between break-even and two cents per share, ahead of the Street’s view of a penny-per-share loss.