This performance is reflected at the top of the income statement, with revenues increasing fivefold in five years, from $267 million to almost $1.3 billion.

Things are a little less glorious at the bottom of the table: the business continues to burn cash - although it finally seems to be approaching breakeven - while the net result suffers from the gargantuan stock option program.

In short: $1.3 billion in revenues, $345 million in book loss and $381 million spent on stock options and the like, i.e. more than a quarter of revenues - not profit, but revenues! - taken by the staff.

Beginning to feel the wind change, and the post-pandemic speculative bubble deflate, the management had the good idea to proceed with a capital increase in 2022. At this rate, the $924 million raised on the market will be used to secure three years of stock options.

Stock options, it must be said, with an outrageously low average exercise price - around $7.50, against a share price of $209. Not surprisingly, the management immediately sold the shares they received, thus pocketing very juicy capital gains.

Shareholders and employees can congratulate themselves on the company's remarkable success since its IPO at $30 per share in late 2017. It is not certain that the former will be as well off as the latter in the sequence that is beginning...

Because one never knows what to do when faced with such a configuration. Growth is exceptional, of course, and business would be extraordinarily profitable if we could finally dispense with these stock option programs...

But we can't, and with "ifs", it's easy to fantasize about empires that will never exist. MongoDB is still valued at x14 its turnover, without having demonstrated its ability to redistribute profits to its shareholders.

That doesn't necessarily make it a bad investment - but only a knowledgeable expert will know.