Twilio beats Q1 estimates, announces chief product officer's departure
Twilio on Wednesday published better-than-expected first quarter financial results. The cloud communications firm also announced that its chief product officer is stepping down as the company reorganizes its R&D efforts.
Twilio's non-GAAP net income per share for the quarter was 5 cents on revenue of $590 million, up 62 percent year-over-year.
Wall Street was expecting a net loss per share of 9 cents on revenue of $532.94 million.
"We delivered another quarter of outstanding growth in Q1, as companies across industries and around the world continue to turn to Twilio's customer engagement platform to drive their digital transformation," CEO Jeff Lawson said in a statement. "Over the last year, one thing has become extremely clear: we are in the midst of a massive shift in the way companies engage with their customers that is driving a generational opportunity for Twilio."
Twilio offers a bevy of communications services and its roadmap makes the company more of a customer engagement platform. In Q3 2020, the company acquired Segment, a player in the customer data platform (CDP) market, in an all-stock deal worth $3.2 billion.
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Twilio's total Q1 revenue included $44.6 million from Twilio Segment.
The company reported more than 235,000 active customer accounts as of March 31, 2021, compared to 190,000 a year earlier. Active customer accounts now include Twilio Segment customer accounts.
Twilio gave a Q2 outlook of revenue between $591 million and $601 million. That's above analyst expectations for revenue of $486.01 million.
Meanwhile, the company is splitting its R&D into three units, each reporting to Lawson: Twilio Communications Platform, Twilio Data Platform, and the Twilio Core Platform.
Twilio is searching for a leader for the Twilio Core Platform, given the impending departure of its current Chief Product Officer, Chee Chew. After serving in that role since January 2019, Chew has decided to leave the company, effective May 17.
Twilio has promoted Simon Khalaf, SVP & GM Communications Platform, giving him responsibility over Twilio's core communications products.
Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Twilio Segment, will be responsible for Twilio's Data Platform. In addition to Segment, that includes SendGrid Email and SendGrid Marketing Campaigns. The new platform will serve marketing workloads.