From Unicorn to Unicorpse: Jive Software Reports a Mighty Fall

The global enterprise social software market may have been projected to grow 11.3% annually to $8.14 billion in 2019, but the impressive growth rate of the industry is not translating into similar benefits for enterprise social software provider Jive (Nasdaq: JIVE). The company has seen its valuation tumble over the last few years as its erstwhile Unicorn status dwindled to a unicorpse*.

Jive Software’s Financials

Palo Alto-based Jive Software was founded in 2001 with a mission to change the way that work gets done through a social business software that would promote creativity, innovation, and productivity. Their core offering is a social business software platform called Jive Engage Platform, which allows employees to communicate and collaborate within the organization and with the organization’s customers and partners.

The company was initially venture funded and had raised $70 million from investors including Bob Pasker, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Lighter Capital, and Sequoia Capital. In December 2011, the company went public on the Nasdaq at a stock price of $12 each at a market capitalization of $700 million.

Jive has been able to deliver strong revenue growth over the years. Revenues have grown from $77.3 million in 2011 to $178.7 million in 2014. During the period, losses have grown from $50.8 million to $56.5 million.

For the recently reported third quarter, Jive saw revenues grow 7% over the year to $49.9 million. By segment, product revenues grew 9% to $46 million and Professional Services revenues were $4.4 million.

For the current fourth quarter, Jive forecast revenues of $49 million-$50 million with a net loss of $0.04-$0.06 per share. The Street had forecast revenues of $49.2 million with a net loss of $0.08 per share.

Jive’s Extending Partnerships

Earlier this quarter, Jive entered into a partnership with Egnyte. Through the partnership, customers will be able to collaborate in Jive around any content stored in Egnyte from any device or location. The secure integration between the companies will provide joint customers with access to edit and publish content in the platform of their choice while ensuring that the entire organization is kept in the loop with content. Additionally, the data will continuously be synced between the two platforms. Note: Egnyte is also a Kleiner Perkins company.

Jive may be coming up with newer offerings and partnerships to keep customers interested, but it is still facing tough competition from players like Microsoft and Salesforce. Microsoft, for instance, offers Yammer as part of a bundle with Office 365 applications. Similarly, Salesforce is offering its Chatter to its customers. It is not just the bigger players, but there are several other startups that are also competing with Jive. Companies like Atlassian offer HipChat, which is a less expensive and a more user friendly product than Jive’s offering. Add to the tough competition, the market isn’t too pleased with Jive’s continuous loss-making quarters. The company is yet to turn in profits and continued investments in product development and sales and marketing are not driving it to profits soon enough.

It isn’t a surprise, thus, that Jive’s stock is trading at $4.13 with a market capitalization of $313.4 million. It is a far cry from the $1.5 billion valuation the stock had touched back in early 2012.

* The term Unicorpse was first coined in a TechCrunch article by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures.

This segment is a part in the series : From Unicorn to Unicorpse