This software company beat analysts’ estimates by $0.05 last quarter, and Wall Street expects it to grow 45.5% next year.
Twilio Inc. (TWLO)
From Cabot Growth Investor
If a company big or small wants to automate and simplify communications to customers, clients or coworkers, Twilio and its well-rounded, customizable and relatively easy-to-use communications platform is fast becoming the go-to choice. Coca Cola Enterprises uses Twilio to rapidly dispatch service technicians; Airbnb uses it to automatically text rental hosts information of potential guests, including dates and the price of a stay; the Red Cross of Chicago automatically sends texts to volunteers in an area with pertinent info about a disaster; Trulia uses Twilio to power its click-to-call app so potential buyers can hook up with an agent right quick; EMC uses the platform to quickly send texts to employees when an IT service goes down; and Twilio’s newer Flex offering (cloud-based, flexible call center application) has already signed up some big customers such as Lyft, and its new Pay app allows developers to process payments over the phone without reading a card number to a rep.
Just about any business can use Twilio’s communications platform for text, voice, video, chats and messaging apps. And thanks to the company’s proposed acquisition of Sendgrid (likely to be completed in early 2019), the platform will now include the email capabilities, and the firm’s recently launched Flex product offers clients a cloud-based customizable contact center functions. It also has a new PAY service that allows developers to process payments over the phone without reading numbers to a customer service rep.
The firm exited September with 61,153 active customers (up 32% from a year ago), but it’s getting more big clients (it inked Fortune 500 financial services and medical testing outfits in Q3), helping revenue per customer rise 27%. All told, revenue growth is accelerating in a big way, and earnings have leapt into the black. Fundamentally, we see Twilio as something of an emerging blue chip—a name that institutional investors will build positions in for many quarters to come. And, on that note, we’re encouraged that the stock has been one of the most resilient during the market’s fourth quarter maelstrom.
Michael Cintolo, Cabot Growth Investor, www.cabotwealth.com, 978-745-5532, December 28, 2018