8x8 misses earnings estimates, reports record revenue in fiscal 2Q12

VoIP provider 8x8 (Nasdaq: EGHT), which saw record revenues last quarter, reported record sales for its fiscal second quarter of 2012, but missed analyst estimates on earnings per share by 2 cents.

Despite the narrow miss, the company maintained that its strategy to go after upmarket customers--larger businesses and government customers--was gaining traction, helping it add 300 new business voice accounts.

"We are excited about the prospects we see in these markets through our new sales channel partners," said Bryan Martin, 8x8's chairman and chief executive.

The company reported EPS of 1 cent, on net income of $800,000, down from 3 cents and $2 million a year earlier; total revenue for the quarter was $19.8 million, a 14 percent increase compared to revenue of $17.4 million for the same period of fiscal 2011.

8x8 said business customer revenue made up 91 percent of its total for the quarter and that it grew 21 percent year-over-year. Cloud data service became a slightly larger part of 8x8's revenue picture, increasing to 3.1 percent of total revue from 2.5 percent.

Business customer churn was essentially flat, 2.1 percent in the quarter compared to 2.2 percent a year ago. 8x8 ended the quarter with 26,727 business customers, including 250 customers added from the Contactual acquisition, up from 25,455 in the prior quarter and 22,167 customers a year ago.

"We experienced unusually strong summer demand for our cloud-based unified communications solutions," said Martin. "We executed upon several key strategic initiatives that underscore 8x8's unique role as the one stop shop for industry-leading, 'gold standard' solutions, highlighted this quarter by the expansion of our offerings with the acquisition of Contactual."

Martin added that August was 8x8's best month ever for recurring revenue generated, and he said ARPU had increased to $207 from $200 in the prior quarter.

For more:
- see this release

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