Jive-ing the Public Market

According to an IDC report released for the previous year, the worldwide enterprise social market segment was led by IBM with revenues of $105.4 million from IBM Connections. IBM accounted for 13.7% of the market’s share. Jive Software (Nasdaq:JIVE) followed IBM at a distant second position with $65.3 million in revenues and 8.5% market share. Microsoft’s Yammer was a distant eighth with $22.3 million in revenues for the year. In a more recent report, IDC estimates the market to have grown 25% over the year to $1 billion in 2012 with IBM Connections maintaining its market leadership position for four years in a row. IDC estimates the market to continue to grow to $4.5 billion by 2016.

Jive’s Financials
Jive Software’s Q1 revenues grew 34% over the year to $33.9 million with billings growing 35% to $38.2 million. By segment, product revenues grew 41% to $30.7 million, and revenues from professional services grew 13% to $3.2 million. Loss per share for the quarter increased to $0.25 compared with a loss of $0.15 per share a year ago.

For the current quarter, Jive is projecting revenues of $34.5 million-$35.5 million with a loss of $0.16-$0.18 per share. They expect to end the year with revenues of $148 million-$153 million with a loss of $0.55-$0.62 per share.

Jive’s Acquisitions
Recently Jive has made several small acquisitions to help expand its market reach. Earlier last month, it announced the acquisition of Iceland-based CLARA for an estimated $9 million. CLARA was founded in 2008 by and is known for community-based analytic tools that help organizations understand, monitor, and connect with members on online social tools. These tools help customers predict social trends so that they can take proactive measures to address those trends.

Last month it also acquired San Jose–based StreamOnce for an estimated $10 million. StreamOnce is known for a social business platform that lets workers collaborate with required systems. Soon after the acquisition, Jive launched Jive StreamOnce, a service that allows people to use a single communications platform to collaborate with others. Not only does the tool help in communication with employees, but it also integrates business applications, email and Jive’s other collaboration tools for the organization.

Jive’s Product Expansion
Besides acquisitions, Jive has also been focused on expanding its product portfolio. It recently announced the launch of a new cloud release that comes with newer features to increase the efficiency of communication within the organization. One such feature is known as Purposeful Places, which lets organizations create virtual work places. The new feature is well integrated with both Salesforce.com and Box to offer more effective marketing and sales tools. Organizations can make use of Deal Room, where sales teams and subject matter experts collaborate to work on contract and proposal related issues while remaining connected with Salesforce.com. Marketing teams have access to a Campaign Room, where they can collaborate with multiple teams on marketing campaigns and can share high-resolution files and media content through the integration with Box.

Another feature in the new release includes Structured Outcomes, a tool that offers focused conversations on specific business goals to help increase the speed of action taken in response communication. The feature helps track discussion topics that have been turned to actionable items with their assigned owners. Users have access to escalate, view, and communicate using their mobile devices as well.

Jive’s stock is trading at $16.82 with a market capitalization of $1.12 billion. The stock touched a 52-week high of $21.97 in June 2012.

My guess is that either Oracle or SAP will buy Jive.