DocuSign Is No Longer Suffering From Its Post-Pandemic Hangover

Last week, DocuSign Inc DOCU shares spiked as much as 12% when the e-signature company delivered better than expected earnings along with a strong guidance. However, as CEO Allan Thygesen warned about cautious consumer behavior, shares gave up the early gains on Friday. But, the macroeconomic factors that are weakening even the strongest players didn’t dim the fact that DocuSign had a solid quarter and that it is well positioned for what lies ahead by leveraging its competitive advantages. 

Quarter Highlights

For the quarter ended on April 30th, DocuSign’s revenue rose 12% YoY to $661.4 million, beating analyst estimates of $642 million that Refinitiv gathered. In the first quarter of DocuSign’s 2024 fiscal year, subscription revenue also increased by the 12% to $639 million. Professional services and other segment also experienced a spike of 14% as revenue amounted to $22 million from the prior-year period.

The resulting net income amounted $539,000, or zero cents per share, which is quite an improvement to $27.4 million net loss, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier.

Earnings amounted to 72 cents per share, adjusted, significantly topping Refinitiv’s consensus of 56 cents per share.

At the end of the quarter, DocuSign gathered a paying userbase of 1.4 million paying users along with 1 billion users. The e-signature company emphasized its international presence as it serves 180 countries, which reported a YoY growth of 17%.

Other News

DocuSign unveiled Webforms through which users will be able to customize and manage their own forms, including the process of exporting and analyzing the collected data. 

Fiscal Second Quarter Guidance

Revenue is expected in the range between $675 million to $679 million, topping Refinitiv’s consensus estimate of $667 million. For the full fiscal year, revenue is expected in the range between $2.71 billion to $2.73 billion, with analysts expecting $2.7 billion.

Intensified Competition Had Its Toll

Despite the company’s role in the undergoing digital transformation, DocuSign’s value sank as its growth slowed down dramatically since 2021. Besides the economic slowdown, one reason behind this fall is intensified competition. With many new entrants, the all-mighty Adobe Inc ADBE is certainly the most prominent one. Adobe will be reporting its fiscal second quarter financial performance on June 15th and these results are expects to reflect the strength of its Digital Media solutions as well as a solid momentum across its Creative Cloud and Document Cloud. Wall Street is quite optimistic as Adobe has also included generative AI in its strategy. During its recent summit, Adobe unveiled Firefly, a new platform organization can use to meet the growing demand for content creations. 

The Pandemic Growth Hangover Is Gone

The digital signing company has been around for quite some time now, it helped build the concept of remote signing and literally came to our rescue during the gloomy COVID-19 days when meeting face to face literally became an impossible mission. All in all, DocuSign reported an encouraging quarter while announcing a rainbow of new services under its umbrella, as well as a handful of C-suite hires. Considering the size of the addressable market, if DocuSign’s predictions regarding the rise of remote and hybrid work are correct, DocuSign is in for everything but modest future results. According to a recent market study by Quince Market Insights, the global Digital Signature market was valued at $4.54 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $69.81 billion by 2032, which translates to a skyrocketing CAGR of 31.52%.

DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only. It is not intended as investing advice.