Klaviyo fourth-quarter forecast misses estimates, shares drop after hours

By Bill Peters

Company says it drew more deep-pocketed customers during the third quarter

Digital-marketing platform Klaviyo Inc. on Tuesday said it attracted more deep-pocketed customers and more customers overall during the third quarter, but its losses swelled and its fourth-quarter sales forecast came up short of Wall Street's estimates.

The results were Klaviyo's (KVYO) first since its public-trading debut in September, amid investor caution over IPOs.

The company said it expected fourth-quarter sales of between $195 million and $197 million, compared with FactSet forecasts for $197 million. However, Klaviyo's full-year sales forecast of $691.5 million to $693.5 million was above FactSet estimates for $691.1 million.

Shares fell more than 7% after hours on Tuesday.

Klaviyo helps businesses launch automated email marketing campaigns -- some of which have likely landed in your inbox. Its customers include thousands of small and medium-sized business.

The company said it ended the third quarter with 135,000 of those customers, compared with some 109,000 a year ago. And it said it finished the quarter with 1,699 customers that generated more than $50,000 in annualized recurring revenue, a gauge of the total value of paid subscriptions to its services. That was well up from 899 in the same quarter last year.

Klaviyo reported a third-quarter net loss of $297.1 million, or $1.24 a share, compared with $23.9 million, or 10 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. Revenue rose to $175.8 million, compared with $119.2 million in the prior-year quarter.

Klaviyo has tried to make it easier for businesses to harness their own consumer data to coordinate more precise messaging online. The company has grown as privacy concerns and restrictions on selling consumer data have made it harder for big tech companies and social-media platforms -- which online retailers once relied on for a lot of their consumer data -- to collect that data and sell it.

However, some analysts have worried about competition -- from companies like MailChimp, Braze Inc. (BRZE) and Adobe Inc. (ADBE) -- as well as its overlap Shopify Inc. (SHOP), which has invested millions in Klaviyo. And businesses over the past year have become more conservative with their online ad budgets, amid concerns about the economy.

-Bill Peters

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11-07-23 1715ET

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