DocuSign
shares were sharply higher in after-hours trading Thursday, after the e-signatures company posted better-than-expected results for the fiscal first quarter ended April 30, and raised its outlook for the fiscal year ended January 2024.
For the April quarter, DocuSign (ticker: DOCU) posted revenue of $661.4 million, up 12% from the year ago quarter, and nicely ahead of both the company’s guidance range of $639 million to $643 million, and Street consensus at $642 million. Billings were $674.8 million, well above the company’s guidance range of $615 million to $625 million. It is an increase of 10%, compared with the company’s original target of 1% to 2%.
The Street is likely to be especially pleased with the strong growth in billings.
“While we have work ahead of us, I am encouraged by our progress to enable smarter, easier, trusted agreements. As we continue to execute on our strategy and leverage our competitive advantages, notably in AI, DocuSign is well positioned for the future,” CEO Allan Thygesen said in a statement.
In an interview with Barron’s, Thygesen said he was pleased with the financial results, but adds that he is “really happy about our much faster pace of product innovation,” and “improved go-to-market execution.”
But Thygesen added that he remains cautious on the macroeconomic outlook, with slightly more caution from enterprise customers, offset by relative strength in the small business segment. And he noted the company’s guidance doesn’t assume any significant shift in the economic environment.
On the topic of the strong billings performance in the quarter, he said the company saw its “largest-ever” on time renewal rate in the quarter. He notes that its targets for the July quarter point to some moderation of the trend.
For the July quarter, DocuSign projects revenue of $675 million to $679 million, topping the Street consensus forecast at $670 million. Billings are projected at $646 million to $656 million; at the midpoint that is roughly in line with the Street at $651 million.
For FY 2024, the company now sees revenue ranging from $2.713 billion to $2.725 billion, a little above consensus at $2.7 billion, up from a previous range of $2.695 billion to $2.707 billion. DocuSign’s new forecast for full-year billing is a range of $2.737 billion to $2.757 billion, up from a previous forecast of $2.705 billion to $2.725 billion.
Meanwhile, the company is making some progress on adding new generative AI features to its contract management software. It is shipping software that creates summaries of documents to make them easier to understand for all signees. By the end of the year, Thygesen said, DocuSign will begin rolling out new software to analyze trends and search across all of a company’s corporate agreements—in some cases across hundreds of thousands of contracts.
In late trading, DocuSign initially spiked more than 11%, but the rally moderated after the company’s earnings call, with gains trimmed to about 4%.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com
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