Coupa sheds light on its earnings and discusses trends in Covid recovery, digital transformation

Coupa, a provider of business spend management software (BSM), lost share price but did better than analysts expected — and its revenue grew more than expected, reports said after Coupa released Q1 earnings information Monday.

“For the quarter, the spend-management software company posted revenue of $166.9 million, up 40% from a year earlier, and ahead of both its own guidance range of $151.5 million to $152.5 million and the Street consensus of $151.1 million. Non-GAAP profits were 7 cents a share; the company had projected a loss of 18 cents to 21 cents a share,” according to a Barron’s article on Coupa.

On an earnings call with analysts, Coupa executives gave their view of trends for the Covid recovery and the digital transformation of back offices.

Coupa also announced the promotion of Todd Ford, its CFO since 2015 who has been named President of Finance and Operations. He also will oversee strategic global initiatives. Tony Tiscornia has been named the CFO, a promotion from his role as chief accounting officer.

Coupa Chairman and CEO Rob Bernshteyn said on Coupa’s earnings call Monday, according to an edited transcript:

• “We see the BSM category as a constellation of intersecting needs for the back offices of global companies. At their core, those needs revolve around strategy and spend, whether it’s how you optimize supply chain design and planning, how you run sourcing and procurement or how you manage payments, cash flows and liquidity.”
• “One of the biggest themes that we’re seeing is that true ‘cloud’ is really starting to hit what I would call a critical mass as far as unpacking the back office. When we got this company going over a decade ago, that was one of the big hypothesis we had is that we will be able to go into that back office, begin to unpack the back office with key use cases and then create a unified platform that really pulls them together in a way that’s going to drive incredible value for customers in every area — from supply chain, from transactional spend … to treasury and other areas we touched on. And I can tell you, we feel that there is strong momentum coming out of this pandemic, and we feel really well-positioned going forward.”
• “We anticipate obviously an increase in business travel … toward the tail end of the year, and we’re particularly excited about the new T&E offering we’re going to be taking to market by the end of the year.”

Citi analyst Daniel Jester had an interesting line of questions:

“For the customers that you’re speaking to, who is leading this transformation within the organization? Is this being run out of a procurement office or … is it coming out of finance or operations? If it’s being led in other parts of the organization, how do you make sure that Coupa is at the table as these teams build or rebuild their supply chains?”

Ford said the conversations often now involve the CEO, so it’s a chance to improve the technology stance for the whole company and offer the C-suite immediate cost savings.

“In terms of the buying center, it still tends to be within the CFO or certainly touches the CFO and very often begins to touch the head of supply chain for an organization or head of operations,” Ford said. “But what’s most exciting is that we’re seeing these more and more sponsored by CEOs (who) realize that the unpacking of the back office is under way and the tools and capabilities they have in their back office are really, really subpar based on their digital transformation agenda.”

The BSM specialist last week announced the creation of Coupa Ventures, a $50 million venture fund. Spend Matters’ Managing Director Pierre Mitchell called it a “smart move” and lauded the first two recipients of funding.

We’ll have more information on Coupa Ventures soon.

Check out our other Coupa coverage:

• Coupa launches $50 million venture fund for business spend management
• Deloitte and Coupa discuss how CPOs are leading the way on agility
• Coupa vs. GEP: Procure-to-pay (P2P) head-to-head technology evaluation and comparison [PRO]
• Coupa acquires Pana, another travel solution, in the suite provider’s 6th M&A deal in recent months
• Coupa and integration: Mobilizing to tackle M&A complexity [PRO]
• Coupa’s biggest acquisition yet — LLamasoft transaction overview, initial musings and deal tailwinds