8x8 Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

8×8 (NASDAQ:EGHT) reported second-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s second-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

8×8 Inc reported its sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, with service revenue reaching $187.8 million, a 4.9% increase year-over-year.

Platform usage revenue grew by 51%, driven by the company’s communications APIs in the Asia Pacific region.

The company raised its full-year outlook for revenue, profitability, and operating cash flow, anticipating service revenue between $732 million and $752 million.

8×8 introduced a tiered reseller program and 8×8 Small Business offering, aimed at expanding reach and supporting partners.

The company earned Microsoft certification for its Session Border Controller technology for Direct Routing and Operator Connect, enhancing its offerings for Microsoft Teams users.

AI solutions have seen significant adoption, with recurring revenue from AI solutions growing 58% year over year.

AI Studio, the company’s native development environment, has seen interaction growth of nearly 450% since its App Store availability.

8×8 has reduced its principal debt by approximately 46% from its peak in August 2022, and is in the process of refinancing its remaining debt.

Guidance for fiscal Q3’27 includes total revenue between $188 million and $192 million, and gross margins between 58% and 60%.

The company continues to focus on expanding multi-product adoption and leveraging AI to enhance customer interactions.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Kate Patterson, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kate Patterson (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Today’s agenda will include a review of our results for the second quarter of fiscal 2027 with Samuel Wilson, our Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Kraus, our Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Unless otherwise noted, all financial metrics discussed on this call other than revenue and cash flow from operations are non-GAAP. These non-GAAP metrics were not prepared in accordance with the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP metric is provided in our earnings press release, shareholder letter, and earnings presentation slides, each of which is available on the quarterly results section of our Investor Relations website.

Before we get started, let me remind you that our discussion today includes forward-looking statements about our future financial performance, including investments in innovation and our focus on profitability and cash flow, our plans to refinance our debt, as well as statements regarding our business, products, and growth strategies. We caution you not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as they involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements, as described in our risk factors in our most recent Report on Form 10-K and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q to be filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements made on this call and in the presentation slides will reflect our analysis as of today and we have no plans or obligation to update them.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Samuel Wilson.

Samuel C Wilson (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. We delivered another strong quarter ending in September, our sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. Service revenue reached $187.8 million, up 4.9% year over year. Platform usage revenue, which includes the use of our communications APIs, digital and voice AI interactions, and telephony minutes, grew 51%, driven primarily by the use of our communications APIs in Asia Pacific. Our second quarter outperformance led us to raise our full year outlook for revenue, profitability, and operating cash flow.

Kevin will cover the financial results and outlook. I want to focus on the business we’re building and how we turn more of our platform into value for customers and growth for 8×8. Our promise is to make every conversation count. AI gives that promise new power. It can automate the work of a conversation, set things in motion, help people resolve problems faster, and turn conversation data into knowledge that makes the next interaction more useful.

That starts with reliable communications. Our global carrier-grade voice network combines decades of voice expertise with the connectivity, quality, and operating experience needed to serve businesses around the world. Voice remains central to customer service, particularly when an interaction is complex, urgent, or personal. As AI agents handle more conversations, reliable connections, high-quality audio, and seamless handoffs to employees become even more important.

Our platform brings that network together with contact center applications, communications APIs, interaction data, and native AI. Customers can put these capabilities to work together with fewer systems to integrate and manage. Our priorities remain the same as we outlined in Q1: become truly partner-first, improve customer satisfaction and retention, and increase multi-product adoption. Let me start with partners. We are committing resources, strengthening leadership, and tailoring our offerings to help partners win customers, retain them, and expand their relationships. Our growth depends on their success. During Q2 we introduced a tiered reseller program that rewards those outcomes.

We also introduced 8×8 Small Business, a flexible consumption-based offering that lets resellers serve smaller organizations without fixed seat commitments. Microsoft Teams gives us another opportunity to expand our reach. On November 2nd we announced that 8×8 has earned Microsoft certification for our Session Border Controller technology for both Direct Routing and Operator Connect. We will now run this SBC infrastructure ourselves with no third-party infrastructure provider, which we expect to result in improved quality and reliability with better economics for both 8×8 and Microsoft partners. We are one of the only native cloud communications companies with Microsoft-certified SBC technology enabling both calling options.

Hundreds of millions of people use Teams. Bringing external calling into the environment where they already work is a substantial opportunity for us and our partners. The next opportunity is within our installed base. Many customers first choose 8×8 for a single product. As their needs grow, we want them and their trusted partners to look to us for more. AI increases what those products can do. Transcription, analytics, and call summaries turn conversations into useful knowledge. Shared context makes that knowledge available to employees and AI agents so the next interaction can pick up where the last one ends.

Our October updates make this tangible. Customer 360 brings interaction history into Agent Workspace with sentiment and topic insights, where Speech Analytics is enabled. JourneyIQ puts voice interactions across Work, Contact Center, Engage, and AI Studio on one timeline, helping teams see where calls transferred, stalled, or dropped. Engage brings contact center capabilities to customer-facing employees in sales, field service, finance, and customer success.

They gain tools for more responsive service while supervisors get visibility. Across Engage and the Contact Center, engaged customers more than doubled year over year. CPaaS APIs extend those workflows further. Teams can move from a call to a video, send a secure payment link, or follow up through messaging. Those are enterprise applications connecting communications directly to business processes. Outside Asia Pacific, customers integrating CPaaS APIs into their workflows doubled year over year. More than half of those year-over-year customer additions came in the second quarter. As customers deploy applications and build usage, we see an opportunity to expand this enterprise traffic, particularly in EMEA and North America.

We are also seeing broader adoption of premium capabilities and an acceleration in the adoption of our AI solutions. Overall, customers using three or more revenue-producing 8×8 products grew 19% in the second quarter. Those using four or more products grew more than 50%, both year-over-year numbers. Recurring revenue from our AI solutions grew 58% year over year, and customers using at least one AI solution represented approximately 13% of total recurring revenue at the end of September, up from 7% a year ago.

AI Studio opens up another dimension to the AI opportunity. Communications, conversation intelligence, and shared context are the building blocks for better customer experiences. AI Studio is our native development environment built directly into the platform where customers and partners can bring those capabilities together in their own agents and workflows. They describe what they want to accomplish in plain language. Their agents can draw on customer context, connect to business systems, and work across voice and digital channels.

Starting within 8×8’s platform reduces the complexity of assembling separate technologies and connecting them afterwards. AI Studio has moved from open beta to our early adopter program. We provide free credits for every customer to get them started with AI Studio through our App Store without additional AI Studio licensing fees so they can get started building agents immediately. AI Studio is HIPAA-ready and designed to support our customers’ GDPR compliance, helping them address privacy and data handling requirements. Interactions powered by AI Studio have grown nearly 450% since it became available through the App Store in April.

The numbers are still small, but customers are already putting agents to work in production. A healthcare organization is routing callers to the right department. An IT services provider has connected the phone and chat agents to its ticketing system. A utility provider has expanded priority routing into after-hours technical support and automated call evaluation. That last example illustrates the expansion opportunity. A customer solves one problem, sees the value, identifies another use case, and builds another agent. Partners can multiply this effect. They can turn industry expertise into applications that they adapt and deploy across multiple customers. Pooled credits and consolidated invoicing make those accounts easier to manage. It’s a classic flywheel: partners build differentiated services, customers get applications tailored to their needs, and our opportunity grows as adoption expands.

Here’s the message I want to leave you with before I turn the call to Kevin: 8×8 is a healthy, growing business with a strong financial foundation and substantial opportunities ahead. Our network connects the conversations businesses depend on. Our platform turns them into insights and shared context. AI Studio allows customers and partners to build their own agents and apps, creating more ways to put those capabilities to work. Capturing the opportunity ahead of us takes focused execution: helping customers succeed and stay with us, expanding adoption, and helping partners grow. That is how we intend to deliver on our promise to make every conversation count and create greater long-term value for our stockholders. Thank you to our customers, partners, and employees, and to our stockholders for their continued support. Kevin, over to you.

Kevin Kraus (Chief Financial Officer)

Thanks, Sam. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for our fiscal second quarter earnings call. In addition to our shareholder letter, detailed financial results are available in our press release and on our investor relations website. Therefore, I’ll focus my remarks on a few key highlights. Unless otherwise stated, all figures other than revenue and cash flow are presented on a non-GAAP basis. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our press release and shareholder letter.

Q2 marks our sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, extending the momentum we built in fiscal 2026, as we again delivered healthy operating profit and further strengthened our balance sheet. We exceeded the high end of our guidance ranges for service revenue, total revenue, operating margin, earnings per share, and cash flow from operations. We had another record quarter for service revenue and generated positive cash flow from operations for the 23rd consecutive quarter.

Total revenue was $192 million and service revenue was $187.8 million, growing 4.3% and 4.9% year over year, respectively. These results again reflected continued strength in our usage-based offerings. Our platform usage revenue, which includes the use of our communication APIs, digital and voice AI interactions, and telephony minutes, set another all-time record, growing approximately 51% year over year and representing an increasing share of our service revenue.

Gross profit was approximately $115.5 million, above the gross profit dollars implied by the midpoint of our Q2 guidance. Gross margin was 60.1%, reflecting the continued mix shift toward our usage-based offerings, which in aggregate carry a lower margin profile but can add meaningful gross and operating profit dollars as the business scales. We are focused on increasing gross profit dollars as platform usage grows. We expect gross profit dollars to increase, but the mix shift will continue to impact the consolidated gross margin percentage, and this is a deliberate choice.

We are prioritizing share capture in the fastest-growing part of the customer engagement market, where AI is reshaping how enterprises connect with customers. Usage-based revenue scales efficiently and, combined with disciplined expense management, this allows us to continue growing operating income dollars and cash flow, which we expect to strengthen over time. Operating expenses were down approximately $9 million year over year, with savings realized across several functional areas. As a result, operating income came in at $20.7 million and operating margin was 10.8%, both above the high end of our guidance range. The combination of higher revenue, lower operating expenses, and lower interest expense resulted in net income of $17.6 million and fully diluted EPS of $0.12 per share, also above the high end of our guidance range.

Contractual interest expense was $3.9 million, down from $4.5 million a year ago, reflecting the continued decline in our debt balances. As expected, cash interest paid in Q2 was approximately $5.9 million, since we paid both our term loan interest payment and the semiannual interest payment on our 2028 convertible notes. Cash flow from operations was $13.1 million for the quarter, above the high end of our guidance range. We ended the quarter with $102.6 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash, an increase of approximately $10.3 million sequentially, reflecting strong operating cash generation. We ended Q2’27 with $309.4 million of principal debt outstanding. On October 9, we repaid an additional $12.5 million in principal, bringing the balance of the term loan down to $95 million and total debt to approximately $297 million.

On a post-payment basis, we have reduced principal debt by more than $250 million, or approximately 46%, from the August 2022 peak of $548 million. As we previewed last quarter, our remaining term loan balance has been reclassified to current liabilities on our balance sheet, consistent with standard GAAP treatment ahead of the August 2027 maturity. We are well along in our refinancing process, and we are confident that we will have a solution in place that addresses our debt structure, including the term loan and the 2028 notes, ahead of the August 2027 maturity of the term loan. Our consistent cash flow generation, operating discipline, and multi-year track record of debt reduction provide a strong foundation for this process.

We will share additional details at the appropriate time. Turning to guidance, we are providing both third quarter and updated full year fiscal 2027 guidance. Our outlook reflects continued focused execution and operating discipline. As we continue building a more diversified, durable business, we are leaning into where the market is growing fastest while protecting profitability and cash flow through the operating discipline we have demonstrated quarter after quarter.

For fiscal Q3’27, we are providing the following guidance: Service revenue is expected to be between $184 million and $188 million. Total revenue is anticipated to be between $188 million and $192 million. We anticipate gross margin between 58% and 60%, reflecting the continued mix shift toward usage-based revenue. We anticipate operating margin between 8% and 10%. This results in a range for fully diluted non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.08 to $0.09 per share, based on approximately 150 million fully diluted shares outstanding.

In fiscal Q3, we expect contractual interest expense, which excludes amortization of debt issuance costs, to be approximately $3.7 million. Based on current interest rates and the principal outstanding on our term loan and 2028 convertible notes, we expect to make cash interest payments of approximately $1.7 million, reflecting our term loan interest payment. We anticipate cash flow from operations to be between $11 million and $13 million. Let me provide a little more color on the model dynamics driving our Q3 guidance. We are assuming continued strong growth for platform usage, although the year-over-year growth rate is expected to moderate from 51% in Q2 to the 35% to 45% range year over year, as we lap a strong Q3’26 comparison and focus on higher-margin solutions within the CPaaS portfolio. That said, the continued mix shift to platform usage drives our gross margin outlook slightly down from Q2.

We are keeping operating expenses tightly managed, consistent with our commitment to deliver on our operating income and cash flow targets for the year. For full year fiscal 2027, we are updating our guidance as follows. We are raising our service revenue guidance range to between $732 million and $752 million, an increase of $7 million from our prior range of $725 million to $745 million. This reflects our revenue overperformance in Q2 as well as our confidence in current business trends. Total revenue is anticipated to be between $750 million and $770 million, an increase of $5 million from our prior range of $745 million to $765 million.

We anticipate gross margin to be between 59.7% and 60.2%, reflecting the increasing amount of usage-based revenue in our revenue mix. While our updated gross margin range reflects the continued mix shift toward usage-based offerings, we are managing that mix operationally through disciplined operating expense management. This allows us to raise our full year non-GAAP operating income, earnings per share, and cash flow from operations outlook even as our revenue mix continues to evolve.

Our prior guidance for non-GAAP operating margin implied non-GAAP operating income of approximately $70 million at the midpoint, and we are raising this to a midpoint of $73 million and a range of $68 million to $78 million. This yields an operating margin range of 9.1% to 10.1%. We are also raising our range for fully diluted non-GAAP earnings per share to $0.36 to $0.40 per share from our prior range of $0.33 to $0.38 per share, assuming approximately 150 million average diluted shares outstanding.

For full year fiscal 2027, we are raising our guidance range for cash flow from operations to between $49 million and $54 million, up from our prior range of $45 million to $52 million. In closing, Q2 was another quarter in which we delivered strong financial results. The investments in our platform are driving top-line momentum, while our commitment to financial discipline gives us the flexibility to invest in high-growth areas while raising our profitability and cash flow outlook for the fiscal year. Our updated outlook reflects both our confidence in the trajectory of the business and the operating discipline we continue to demonstrate.

I want to thank our customers for their continued partnership, our employees for their dedication, and our investors for their continued support. With that, I will turn the call over for Q&A.

OPERATOR

Thank you. At this time we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by. Our first question comes from Matthew Moss from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Josh Nichols (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

Hi, it’s Josh Nichols here from B. Riley. Well, look, congrats on the record quarter. Clearly the usage revenue came in well above the 30% to 35% guide. Maybe if you could just give a little bit more color on what’s driving that, you know, traditional CPaaS versus AI and Engage platform offerings overall.

Samuel C Wilson (Chief Executive Officer)

All right, I’ll take the first part of that and I’ll let Kevin make any comment. Number one, it’s across the board. We’re seeing increases in usage products. But a couple things are going on, Josh. First, yes, the core CPaaS business in Southeast Asia continues to grow very robustly. We’ve seen some of our competitors effectively exit the market, opening the door to more opportunities there, and we’ve been seizing on them. Also, all of our AI products are usage-based by nature for the most part when we charge for them, and we’re seeing a very rapid adoption of AI products into our base and those kinds of things.

And, you know, we put out numbers recently in a release. We mentioned them on the call also. I think it’s, Kate, 13% of our revenue now has an AI product attached to it. So we’re seeing that adoption increase, and that’s coming through in the usage baseline also. And so the hard part, obviously, with usage is it’s not contracted, and so there’s not that forward certainty of revenue. But we’re really pleased with how it’s been going.

Kevin Kraus (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, and I’ll echo what Sam just said, Josh. We do have growth in various areas across the platform usage. You know, still the bulk of the revenue is in APAC, but we are seeing upticks elsewhere, so that’s a good sign.

Josh Nichols (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

I noticed a couple things, like, one, you’ve had very good success, the multi-product customers that are ramping. I’m kind of curious, with the new customers that you’re seeing coming on board, are they coming in strictly as usage customers, or are some landing and then expanding to more UC and Contact Center, or are more of the customers now signing up initially from a multi-product offering?

Samuel C Wilson (Chief Executive Officer)

Wow. I mean, you know, the thing is, it’s a little bit of everything, right. So we are winning more multi-product land new logos. Obviously a vast majority of our usage-based are add-ons to existing UC/CC customers, and still landing with that seat message is, you know, that seat product is generally the first—the core of the land. So even if we sell an AI Studio or we sell one of, you know, CPaaS or one of the other things, or SMS messaging or WhatsApp or anything else, most of those are effectively add-ons to that core business platform land for our main business.

And then in Asia, for our CPaaS business, that just starts as all usage, all new logos are usage. We do sell, obviously, in Australia, New Zealand, and other places UC/CC, but it’s not as big as the CPaaS business. But it’s a little bit of everything. I’d love to tell you it’s really straightforward, but it all depends on the problem the customer is trying to solve.

Josh Nichols (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

Yep. Yeah, fair point. I think that’s good for now. I appreciate you guys. That’s all for me. Great to see the progress the business has been making here. I’ll jump back in the queue.

Samuel C Wilson (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Josh.

OPERATOR

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by. Okay, I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Sam Wilson for closing remarks.

Samuel C Wilson (Chief Executive Officer)

All right. So thank you, everyone. I know it’s a super busy day with the elections yesterday and lots of earnings today, so I appreciate the time to be on the call tonight. I just want to refer everybody back to—it’s in our IR section—as we did an analyst event or kind of a readout, virtual event last quarter. I think there’s a lot of super important information, long-term operating model, those kinds of things were in that. So if you have any questions about the company, et cetera, as you read this transcript, please refer to that.

It’s a great source of information. And otherwise we won’t probably speak to you again until after the holidays, so I wish everybody a happy holiday coming up and look forward to talking to you again in January or February. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.