Zendesk rises on revenue beat after rejecting private equity takeover

Customer service and sales software provider Zendesk Inc. saw its share rise slightly in extended trading today after posting fourth-quarter results that beat expectations on revenue.

The company also offered a strong outlook for the next quarter and told shareholders it had rejected a takeover bid from private equity.

The company reported a net loss for period of $61.8 million, with earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation coming to 17 cents per share. Revenue for the quarter rose 32% from a year ago, to $375.4 million. Analysts had been expecting earnings of 18 cents per share on revenue of $369.81 million.

Zendesk also reported full-year fiscal 2021 revenue rose 30% from 2020, to $1.339 billion.

Led by Chief Executive Mikkel Svane (pictured), Zendesk sells a cloud-based customer service platform that’s designed to improve communications between company support and sales teams and their customers. The software combines customer support tools that include help desk, chat and voice services with a full-fledged sales customer relationship management suite and reporting and analytics capabilities.

It’s a fairly unusual combination of capabilities and it’s winning Zendesk a lot of fans. In a letter to shareholders, the company said its enterprise customers are not only generating higher annual recurring revenue, but also signing on for longer engagements and expanding at a higher rate.

It also said its customers have shown significantly higher retention rates. Customers generating more than $250,000 in revenue now account for 38% of the company’s annual recurring revenue, up from 32% at the end of 2020.

Zendesk also revealed it rejected an unsolicited bid from a consortium of private equity firms, which wanted to buy the company outright in an all-cash transaction valued at between $127 and $132 per share.

“After careful review and consideration conducted in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors, the Board concluded that this non-binding proposal significantly undervalues the Company and is not in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders,” Zendesk said in a statement, without naming its prospective suitors.

Looking ahead, Zendesk said it sees first-quarter revenue of between $381 million and $387 million, the midpoint of which is just ahead of Wall Street’s consensus of $383.07 million. For the full year, Zendesk is forecasting total revenue of $1.675 billion to $1.705 billion versus Wall Street’s $1.69 billion estimate.

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