Cloud Stocks: SurveyMonkey Should Get Into PaaS

According to a MarketWatch report, the global Online Survey Software market size is expected to grow at 11% CAGR to reach $2.58 billion by 2026 from $1.2 billion in 2019. SurveyMonkey (Nasdaq: SVMK) recently reported its first fiscal quarter results that delivered stellar growth.

SurveyMonkey’s Financials

SurveyMonkey’s Q1 revenues grew 29% to $88.3 million. GAAP net loss was $24.3 million. On an adjusted basis, net loss was $4.3 million or $0.03 per share.

Enterprise sales revenues accounted for 29% of the total revenues, up from 16% a year ago and grew 128% over the year. Enterprise sales customers grew 75% to 6,800. Deferred revenue grew 37% to $152 million and remaining performance obligation grew 39% to $169.1 million.

Paying users grew 11% to 746,200. Almost 85% of its paying users were on annual plans compared with 78% reported last year. Average revenue per user grew 14% to $483 for the quarter.

For the second quarter, SurveyMonkey expects to report revenues of $87-$90 million. It withdrew its outlook for the year due to the current economic conditions.

SurveyMonkey’s Covid Offerings

SurveyMonkey realizes that the current crisis is dominating all aspects of its and its customer’s lives. To address the crisis, the company has launched several offerings and services. To maintain its focus on the enterprise segment, it launched COVID-19 packaged solutions targeted at these customers. The COVID-19 package helps address use cases such as symptom monitoring, contact tracking, healthcare worker needs assessment, onsite health assessment for businesses to support re-opening, and employee and customer sentiment. The packages include survey templates along with several consulting and technology integration services.

It also launched coronavirus crisis resources to help customers and the community at large. It is leveraging analytics from SurveyMonkey’s research team to create survey templates, recommend discounts for education, charities, and non-profit organizations. It onboarded new government and healthcare customers who needed COVID-19 related survey research.

More recently, it announced COVID Near You, a collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School. The solution will help accelerate coronavirus research efforts across the country. The solution collects data from millions of daily survey respondents to help drive research into the virus’ behavior.

Besides addressing the current crisis, SurveyMonkey also launched other business-focused services. It released the Expert Solutions suite of market research tools that helps simplify product and marketing concept testing. The solution integrates SurveyMonkey Audience market research panel and its AI-Powered Insights to identify data pattern recognition with different concept testing solutions. It makes it easier for customers to collect feedback on the messages, visuals, and products that the target demographic reacts best to.

SurveyMonkey’s PaaS Strategy

SurveyMonkey currently operates on an API integration model. Its Mobile SDK allows app developers to integrate SurveyMonkey surveys and responses into their iOS or Android apps. It has also built several integrations with other platforms to provide pre-built apps that empower them to quickly integrate with other popular tools. It has more than a hundred apps and plug-ins with these partners. But the company does not, as yet, have an active PaaS strategy. I think for SurveyMonkey to get to the next level of growth, it will need to define its own PaaS strategy instead of relying on integrations.

Its stock is trading at $23 with a market capitalization of $3.3 billion. It was trading at a 52-week high of $24.03 last month. The stock had fallen to a 52-week low of $9.35 in March this year amid the market turbulence. In September 2018, SurveyMonkey had raised $180 million by listing at $12 apiece at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

This segment is a part in the series : Cloud Stocks