Twilio announces optimistic 2027 profit forecast at investor day

Cloud communications software maker Twilio on Thursday issued a hopeful profit forecast for the next few years.

The company sees its adjusted operating margin widening to between 21% and 22% in 2027 as part of a three-year framework for guidance. That’s higher than Visible Alpha’s 19.68% consensus. Twilio’s adjusted operating margin in the most recent quarter was 16.1%.

Twilio revealed its new guidance at a Thursday investor event. There, the company’s executives also committed to generating $3 billion in free cash flow over the next three years, compared with approximately $692 million in free cash flow for 2022, 2023 and 2024. The Visible Alpha consensus for Twilio’s 2025 through 2027 was $2.76 billion.

The company’s stock price rose more than 5% in extended trading after the company released its presentation for the event.

If 2024 was about rebuilding Twilio’s foundation, 2025 is all about execution, CEO Khozema Shipchandler told CNBC ahead of the company’s investor day.

“If we execute well in 2025, I think we write our own story from 2026 on,” said Shipchandler, who joined Twilio as finance chief after 22 years at GE in 2018 and replaced co-founder Jeff Lawson as CEO in January 2024.

Twilio, which sends text messages and emails for customers, did not issue a revenue growth target for 2027 at its Thursday event.

Management on Thursday also provided guidance for 2025. It called for $825 million to $850 million in free cash flow and the same amount in adjusted operating income, with 7% to 8% revenue growth year over year. The Visible Alpha consensus was $814 million in adjusted operating income and about $808 million in free cash flow. The 2025 revenue forecast was in line with LSEG consensus.

Over 9,000 AI companies are already building on Twilio services. That includes OpenAI, which in December announced the 1-800-CHATGPT service that draws on Twilio voice tools.

“We want to be able to take a bunch more of those, as well as large enterprises on,” Shipchandler said. “We’re kind of open season on both.”

After Twilio shares debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 2016, investors piled in as the company delivered consistently high revenue growth rates. The stock drifted lower in 2022 as investors became more interested in profitable companies, with interest rates ratcheting upward. At the same time, Twilio’s revenue growth was slowing down.

Shareholder input influenced a reorganization that included a 17% workforce reduction in early 2023, and activist investors Anson Funds and Legion Partners Asset Management agitated for a sale of Twilio or one of its business units, CNBC reported.

Since activist investor Sachem Head Capital Management won a Twilio board seat last April, Twilio’s stock has jumped about 81%, as revenue growth has accelerated and losses have narrowed.

Twilio has an opportunity to show double-digit growth in 2025 and beyond, Mizuho analysts said in a note earlier this month. The analysts have the equivalent of buy rating on the stock.

By expanding into new areas, such as conversational artificial intelligence, Twilio says it can sell into a $158 billion total addressable market by 2028, compared with $119 billion when only focusing on the communications and customer data platform categories.

The company doesn’t believe acquisitions will be necessary to reach its new total addressable market, a spokesperson said.

Twilio’s preliminary results for the fourth quarter show 11% revenue growth, with adjusted operating income that exceeds the top end of the $185 million to $195 million range that the company issued in October. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected 7.9% revenue growth, and according to Visible Alpha, the adjusted operating income consensus was about $190 million.

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