David Morken
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question
As Sarah said, we are living in unprecedented times. I want to begin by thanking God for comforting those, who are grieving lost loved ones for giving strength to those who are serving and to ask him to bestow wisdom upon our elected officials and for a safe and rapid return to work and school for the tens of millions who have lost their semesters and jobs. We have been humbled by the importance of our mission to deliver the power to communicate during this season of great loss and sacrifice. We are making sure that health care systems, governments, businesses, teachers and students remain connected with those they need and serve. Our team has been working around the clock and from locations around the country to serve our customers 24 hours each day seven days a week. Our enterprise customers play a pivotal role in our communities and increasingly rely on our software and network platform to both develop and deliver robust voice calling, audio conferencing, text messaging and emergency 911 services, whether they are working remotely or in the office. Our robust platform and nationwide network scaled in days to meet the 30% surge in concurrent call demand caused by so many Americans working from home. Owning and operating our own nationwide All-IP Voice Network proved to be critical. Our technology teams were able to quickly augment capacity and optimize existing network assets to support millions of audio calls into video conferences, voice conference calls, text messages and individual conversations and all without any interruption of any kind. The agility required to add capacity to our network in real-time during unprecedented volume increases, was only possible by owning and operating our network. We benefit from visibility into all network traffic, ensuring the utmost reliability and quality, while allowing us to anticipate future capacity requirements on our platform. We collaborate daily with the other largest nationwide telecommunications operators, to exchange large volumes of calls and messages. In moments, such as these, our vertically integrated approach to CPaaS has also been critical to serving our largest enterprise customers, rallying to serve explosive growth among their users. Bandwidth has joined the Keep Americans Connected Pledge, we promise for 60 days to not terminate service to residential or small business customers because of their inability to pay their bills, due to disruptions caused by the pandemic. We also plan to waive any late fees a customer may incur because of their economic circumstances related to the pandemic. We will remain vigilant in our efforts to mitigate and guard against, illegitimate activity on our platform and have expanded our illegal robocall blocking program and text message filters to monitor, block and disconnect fraudulent activity related to the pandemic. Again, we are honoured to be in a position to contribute to the nationwide response, during this challenging time. Turning to our performance, we had a record-setting start to our year with first quarter CPaaS revenue increasing 31% year-over-year, driving total revenue of $68.5 million, while achieving non-GAAP net income of positive $1.1 million. The acceleration in our CPaaS revenue was driven by the fundamental strength of our business and by our ability to serve the increased demand from the customers who offer UCaaS services and Meeting Solutions that are keeping Americans connected. The CPaaS revenue acceleration attributable to our fundamental business drivers is best characterized as broad-based growth, across all our services, driven by continued enterprise migration to the cloud. We observed markers of momentum last quarter with strong performance from a diverse set of existing and new customers across all our offerings. Enterprises are growing and innovating on our platform over many years. And we continue to attract innovative companies to our platform. During the first quarter we grew net new customers 34%, year-over-year. Our CPaaS revenue performance was also bolstered by customers that are experiencing increased demand, for work-from-home connectivity solutions. This includes business VoIP providers and customers in UCaaS and Meeting Solutions verticals. We have served many of these types of customers for years including Zoom, RingCentral, Microsoft, Google and Dialpad among others. But in this season of working remotely, we have in some cases doubled capacity for select Meeting Solutions customers to keep America connected. Our top five Meeting Solutions customers experienced an aggregate 66% increase in usage in March, as compared to the average of the first two months of the quarter. Similarly, we experienced an aggregate 45% increase in usage from our top 10 UCaaS customers in March, as compared to the average of the first two months of the quarter. I'd like to briefly revisit some of the services we power for this group of customers that are being heavily utilized. We provide voice messaging and emergency service to the greatest productivity experiences for knowledge workers and now increasingly more to health care workers, teachers and students among others, needing to connect remotely. If you dial into most video conferences these days and use your phone for audio, you're likely using a Bandwidth number and the call is likely delivered on our network. If you use Zoom Phone or have a Google Voice number for life, both are from Bandwidth. If you use a, UCaaS interface like Dialpad or RingCentral in lieu of desktop phones and PBXs, our platform and networks likely power the voice and messaging components. Relative to our peers, Bandwidth disproportionately serves these types of large and innovative enterprise customers who demand quality and value. Our unique combination of software, network and amazing customer support, delivers a value proposition that resonates deeply with enterprises operating at scale. We do expect usage from UCaaS and Meeting Solutions customers to continue to contribute meaningfully, to our results given the trajectory of the current circumstances. We are cognizant that the tailwind in performance for these UCaaS and Meeting Solution customer cohorts will be partially offset, by the contraction in usage from small and medium-sized businesses that are adversely impacted. Jeff will provide more detail about the first quarter results and expected go-forward contributions to our performance. On the international front, we continue to progress toward and meeting existing customer demand by extending our world-class network and platform into 13 European countries via the same APIs and user experience that we offer domestically today. In the first quarter we continued to have meaningful discussions with our largest customers about our network capabilities in various regions and how we can best serve their voice and messaging needs. I'm also proud to report that we added two new international messaging customers in the quarter. We will pursue our international mission and objectives consistent with our profitability principle and subject to global economic conditions. As a business, we are entering a period where fundamentals matter most. Our business fundamentals are strong and lifting our business to new heights. We have had a longstanding commitment to return to profitability by 2021. Given the current environment, we have decided to accelerate this commitment to non-GAAP net income profitability for full year 2020 and have begun by achieving $1.1 million in the first quarter as I mentioned. We will achieve positive non-GAAP net income this year in a manner that balances top line expansion with improved operating leverage. Our disciplined and seasoned leadership team have grown revenues and profits through 2001, 2004, 2008 downturns, and will do so again in 2020. Many of us have operated together as a bootstrapped anti-fragile team for decades. We are excited about acquiring land from the state of North Carolina to expand and build a new headquarters here in Raleigh. This is a unique opportunity to realize our vision for the growth of our company and to impact our community. We are humbled to be in a position to commit to long-term growth and grateful that our commitment was reciprocated by the state with tax incentives which substantially offset land costs over time. We expect to develop the headquarters in concert with a developer who will bear the majority of the future capital investments with Bandwidth committing to a multiyear lease on terms similar to our existing lease agreements. Founded in 1999, we have endured multiple periods of uncertainty and economic lows. Our focus during such times has been and always will be to serve our customers. Every challenge we face in serving our customers is an opportunity to contribute more to their success than we ever have before. Our platform and network are resilient and under times of duress, emerge stronger and larger. Our team is operating at the highest level, serving each other first and our customers always. We will emerge from this challenge with increased network capacity and redundancy, strengthened partnerships, innovative teams, and loyal customers, some hopefully for life. The passion and perseverance of our people embody all that is anti-fragile. In summary, we are humbled that our mission at Bandwidth is vital and proud of our team for its execution. I want to end this specially by thanking our world-class technology and network engineering teams who have committed days, nights, and weekends to do our part in keeping America connected. We are the greatest country that the world has ever seen. We will emerge from this season with many lessons learned, more resilient to threats, and more capable of providing opportunities for our future generations. With that, let me turn it over to Jeff.