Jive Continues to Dive

According to a recent report by TechNavio, the Global Enterprise Social Software Market is estimated to grow 19% annually over the period 2013 through 2018. The researcher is seeing a strong demand of platforms that provide a comprehensive access to all social media including blogs, email, wikis, and forums. The strong market growth rate has attracted bigger players into the field while helping existing players deliver strong financial performance.

Jive’s Financials
Jive Software’s (Nasdaq: JIVE) third quarter revenues grew 25% over the year to $46.6 million, ahead of market expectations of $44.3 million. Loss per share of $0.04 was significantly better than the Street’s projected loss of $0.09 per share.

By segment, product revenues grew 26% over the year to $42.16 million. Professional Services revenues grew 14% to $4.44 million.

For the current quarter, Jive projected revenues of $46.5 million-$47.5 million with a loss of $0.09-$0.11 per share. The market was projecting revenues at $45.5 million with a loss of $0.13 per share.

Jive’s Upgraded Products
Jive continued to improve their market offerings and during the recently quarter released the latest version of their enterprise communication and collaboration platform. The latest release features an extended ability to help integrate their customers’ hybrid cloud and on-premise IT environments. The biggest enhancement for the product is the integration with Microsoft Office 365 along with a a new connector for Google Docs. Through the integration, Jive’s customers will be able to use Jive’s enterprise platform to communicate with others through email, coordinate projects across multiple teams, and create collaborative documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The upgrade also recognizes the importance of mobile devices and their Fall cloud release features collaboration across desktop and mobile devices, including both iOS and Android devices.

Jive also released an upgrade for the JiveX external community platform. Through the latest version, Jive’s customers will be able to increase engagement with their customers and partners. The upgrade will also be able to provide insight such as ROI-focused analytics and provide improved experiences across both mobile and web devices.

Jive’s Increased Competition
According to news reports last month, Facebook is now also exploring the possibility of entering the enterprise social media market. Reports suggest that Facebook is testing the Facebook At Work app, which will enable employees to communicate with their colleagues. The application will include traditional Facebook tools such as news feed and messaging while ensuring that professional posts are kept separate from the personal ones. Facebook At Work is expected to be released in the next few months. Once released, Facebook At Work will be a tough competitor for the likes of Jive.

The news has already sent Jive’s stock tumbling. It is trading at $5.77 with a market capitalization of $413.09 million. It touched a 52-week low of $5.59 in October this year and has fallen since last December’s 52-week high of $11.44.