Billion Dollar Unicorns: What Is Coupa’s Next Acquisition?

It has been over a year since the San Mateo-based spend management firm Coupa (Nasdaq: COUP) went public. The stock has done well so far, and was recently trading at life high levels. The recently reported results have helped drive the stock upwards, as this was the first time that it reported a positive adjusted net income in the fourth quarter.

Coupa’s Financials

Coupa’s revenues grew 41% over the year to $53.75 million, surpassing the market’s estimates of $48.59 million. Adjusted earnings of $0.02 per share were also better than the consensus estimate of a loss of $0.15 per share for the quarter.

By segment, subscription sales climbed 38% to $46.6 million, and professional services and other revenues grew 70% to $7.1 million.

During the year, the company increased Cumulative Spend Under Management from $365 billion to $680 billion. It expects to grow that number past $1 trillion in the current year.

It ended the year with revenues growing 40% to $186.8 million and a non-GAAP net loss of $0.21.

For the current quarter, Coupa expects revenues of $51-$51.5 million and a net loss of $0.11-$0.13 per share. The market was looking for revenues of $50.75 million with a net loss of $0.12 per share. It expects to end the year with revenues of $227-$230 million and a non-GAAP net loss of $0.23-$0.28 per share.

Coupa’s Enterprise Expansion

Analysts believe that one of the emerging trends within procurement technology is the ability to bring more spend under management by integrating ‘out-of-catalog’ purchases while maintaining control of an organization’s approval workflows and business rules. Coupa is already helping organizations manage this by integrating Amazon Business with its offerings. Last fall, it announced the release of Coupa Open Buy with Amazon Business to be generally available in the United States. Coupa Open Buy with Amazon Business gives an organization’s employees access to the Amazon Business marketplace.

Coupa users can benefit from embedded visibility and instant access to millions of items beyond the catalogs managed by their employer. Together, Coupa and Amazon Business have been working to create a seamless purchasing experience for businesses. The service will allow Coupa’s customers to leverage Amazon Business e-commerce expertise and gain visibility into full product catalogs on an established multi-seller marketplace.

To build on this service, it announced the acquisition of Simeno Holding AG, a leader in cross-catalog search and advanced catalog management. Basel, Switzerland-based Simeno creates localized content from third-party supplier sites to power cross-catalog searches. Its search engine allows employees to simultaneously search company managed catalogs and supplier managed catalogs. It has catalog capabilities in 20-plus languages, and allows for fast uploading and searching across supplier catalogues and leading B2B marketplaces. Coupa plans to leverage Simeno’s services to expand its Open Buy Program by adding a best-in-class cross-catalog search capability. The acquisition will also help Coupa expand presence in the German and Swiss markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Questions for Coupa’s Board

Coupa is one of the few pure-play multi-tenant SaaS vendors in the spend management software space. It is already leveraging the unprecedented opportunity in the SaaS space by acquiring players that will help take its product to the next level. Analysts estimate that the addressable market for Coupa is growing 9% annually to reach $10 billion in 2020. The acquisitions will continue to help broaden the TAM.

I would like to know what other innovations does Coupa have in mind? Over the past year, it has focused on cross-function spend management across an organization and spend analytics. What other services is Coupa looking to build to expand its product reach and TAM within the enterprise? The Simeno acquisition is interesting because it underscores Coupa’s nimbleness in finding and acquiring companies from far-flung geographies. Is Coupa looking at other acquisitions in Europe or Asia?

Its stock is trading at $47.96 with a market capitalization of $2.6 billion. Earlier this month, it had climbed to a life-high of $50.69, after recovering from the low of $22.50 a year ago. The stock had listed in October 2016 at $18 each.

 

Sramana Mitra is the founder of One Million by One Million (1M/1M), a global virtual incubator that aims to help one million entrepreneurs ...

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