Bill.com Holdings Inc. Chief Executive René Lacerte is optimistic that the COVID-19 crisis will drive a longer-term shift to remote work that increases the demand for digital accounting tools.
The company already saw signs of those trends in its recently ended fiscal fourth quarter, as it added 6,700 net new customers, winning that attributed in part to a greater need to manage remote billing during the pandemic. Bill.com BILL,
aimed at small and medium-sized businesses through software products intended to replace the many manual processes involved in traditional business accounting.
See: How 5G Promises to Enable Full-Time Remote Workforce
Lacerte expects that working from home “is here to stay” and that the dynamism that drives small business clients to try out Bill.com’s offerings, as their back office teams can not achieve it in the workplace during the pandemic, will continue to exist even after the crisis is over.
“We see that COVID has been an accelerator in how people think about their work,” he told MarketWatch.
Lacerte said challenges with the U.S. Postal Service could also be something companies think about, noting that he grew up in an entrepreneurial family and knows that those companies that run them “worry about suppliers on time.” Cost cuts at the Postal Service have led to delays in email.
Although Bill.com met earnings and earnings expectations for its last fourth quarter, shares were up about 4% in trading after hours.
The company reported fiscal revenue in the fourth quarter of $ 42.1 million, up from $ 31.7 million a year earlier and ahead of the FactSet consensus, which raised $ 38 million.
Bill.com posted a net loss of $ 9.5 million, or 13 cents per share, compared to a loss of $ 4.5 million, or 56 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. On a adjusted basis, Bill.com lost 2 cents a share, compared to a loss of 2 cents a share a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet model an adjusted loss of 11 cents per share.
Jefferies analyst Samad Samana was most affected by the company’s $ 152 million revelation in outstanding performance obligations at financial institutions to be recognized as revenue. This was upwards of $ 44 million in the March quarter, and although most of the increase in performance commitments is expected to be recognized over a year, Samana said in a note to clients that the traction here is “representative of the new and recent expansions with major [financial institutions]. ”
Bill.com announced in its release a comprehensive agreement with one of the top three small business banks in the US “For her to say this will be the standard solution for payments, for her to make this commitment for us is important, Lacerte told MarketWatch.
He said the increase in performance commitments “is a testament to the platform we have built and the trust partners have in the ability to digitally transform their lives.”
Samana also marked the annual customer retention rate of 82%, in line with the company’s March rate. “This impressive result reduced fears of higher churn and demonstrated the stickiness of Bill.com’s end-customer solutions,” he wrote, while maintaining a hold rating, but raising his price tag to $ 110 from $ 98.
Shares have gained 65% over the past three months as the S&P 500 SPX,
is 15% up.
.
