Shares of AmplitudeAirbnb and Twilio are down sharply this morning after their earnings results yesterday.
It may seem odd to group these companies together given the different industries they operate in: Amplitude does digital product analytics, Airbnb provides a marketplace for consumer accommodation rentals, and Twilio sells communication services for software products through APIs. What could they have in common?
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The answer seems to lie in their growth forecasts for the year, which came in lower than Wall Street had hoped for.
While we weren’t impressed with how slow America’s biggest tech companies are expanding their revenues, it doesn’t seem like we’re dealing with a problem that only affects Big Tech. Their smaller peers are also seeing similar headwinds.
This morning we’ll go through each company’s results and then we’ll hear from the CEO of Amplitude Spencer skating. Finally, we’ll look at a broader index of the growth rates of modern software companies and piece that all together to collect startup takeaways.
The (financial) way forward
Airbnb needs no introduction, so we can jump straight to the numbers. The company reported better-than-expected sales and its first GAAP earnings in the quarter, while also generating handfuls of cash. It certainly feels like a good result, especially considering that revenue was up 20% during Airbnb’s time in this economy.
However, Airbnb expects second-quarter revenue to grow 12% to 16% from a year earlier. That’s well below the 58% growth it saw in Q2 2022, and it’s also down from the 20% growth in Q1 2023. Investors did not like that prediction.
As for Twilio, it reported better-than-expected earnings and gain for the first quarter, but the $980 million to $990 million revenue forecast for the second quarter, or growth of only 4% to 5%, left investors dissatisfied, especially as analysts assuming a much larger revenue of $1.05 billion.
