Coupa Helps Maximize Savings Efficiency to Tackle Global Economic Conditions

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According to a recent report, the Global SaaS-based Expense Management market is expected to grow at 11% CAGR to reach $6.6 billion by 2028. San Mateo-based Coupa (Nasdaq: COUP) recently announced its second quarter results that surpassed market expectations. As economic conditions remain turbulent globally, the company is focusing on delivering added value to its customers.

Coupa’s Financials

Revenues for the second quarter grew 18% to $211 million, ahead of the market’s estimates by 3.76%. GAAP net loss was $75.3 million, compared with net loss of $91.5 million a year ago. Non GAAP net income was $0.20 per share, compared to a net income of $0.26 per share a year ago and analyst estimates of an EPS of $0.09 per share.

By segment, subscription services revenues increased 23% to $192.7 million and professional services revenues fell from $23 million to $18.4 million.

For the third quarter, the company expects revenues of $211-$214 million and non-GAAP net income of $0.08-$0.10 per share. Analysts expect revenues of $213.94 million and an EPS of $0.06 for the quarter. It expects to end the year with revenues of $838-$844 million and net income of $0.37-$0.44 per share. Analysts expect revenues of $839.28 million and an EPS of $0.25 for the year.

Coupa’s Product Upgrades

Coupa continues to expand its presence through product upgrades. In the latest release of its platform, it has streamlined the mobile app for expenses. It improved visibility into reimbursable spend, simplified the process of managing unused travel tickets, and integrated virtual cards into its travel offering. The global economy is in a precarious place.

According to Coupa’s research, while the airfares have gone up globally, the demand has also gone up, thus driving the T&E spend managed by organizations and Coupa. Its cumulative total payment volume reached nearly $15 billion by the quarter end as more customers continue to come online. That’s nearly a 50% increase in approximately two quarters. While this demand appears to be growing in the Americas, Coupa believes that the softness of the economy is being felt more in the European markets.

Irrespective of how the economy progresses, Coupa remains focused on optimizing every dollar spent through its Suite Synergy. It is seeing interesting use cases emerge for its products where it is helping maximize its customers’ savings and efficiency by leveraging power user applications within its suite. For instance, Maersk digitized its entire procurement process and is using Coupa for procure to pay, supplier risk management, and sourcing optimization. With sourcing optimization, Maersk identified over $100 million of potential savings by utilizing reverse auctions where several shippers are bidding for their business.

Coupa is also leveraging big players like Maersk to improve its AI offering. Coupa’s platform has seen over $3.8 trillion in cumulative spend under management through the platform. The resulting data from this spend is helping drive AI behavior. Coupa’s community.ai is broken into three areas: the pooling of customer spend through Coupa Advantage; the pooling of brainpower and collaboration among community members; and the pooling of data through AI and machine learning. By adding customers like Maersk and others onto its platform, Coupa’a AI is helping organizations with fraud protection and prevention. Customers such as Spend Guard are leveraging Coupa’s AI and machine learning technology to automatically analyze a customer’s business spend and flag suspicious transactions in real time. These solutions are becoming more and more valuable under current economic conditions.

Coupa’s stock is trading at $65.23 with a market capitalization of $4.95 billion. It is a far cry from its 52-week high of $259.90 in October last year. It hit a 52-week low of $50.54 in June this year.

Disclosure: All investors should make their own assessments based on their own research, informed interpretations, and risk appetite. This article expresses my own opinions based on my own research of product-market fit, channel execution, and other factors. My primary interest is in product strategy. While this may have bearing on stock movements, my writings tend to focus on long-term implications. The information presented is illustrative and educational, but should not be regarded as a complete analysis nor recommendation to buy or sell the securities mentioned herein. I am not a registered investment adviser and I am not receiving compensation for this article.

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Photo credit: Coupa Software/Flickr.com.