What happened

Shares of cloud-based communications tools specialist Twilio (TWLO -0.55%) fell on Wednesday, declining as much as 5.3%.

The growth stock's gain follows Twilio's second-quarter earnings release on Tuesday afternoon. While the company crushed analyst expectations for the quarter, shares seem to be taking a breather following a huge run-up this year.

A chart showing a stock price moving lower.

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Revenue grew 46% year over year during the second quarter, hitting $400.8 million. Non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share came in at $0.09, up from $0.03 in the year-ago quarter. Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue of $368.2 million and a non-GAAP loss per share of $0.09.

Driving the company's growth during the period was a 24% year-over-year increase in active customer accounts and robust growth in spending from existing customers. The company's dollar-based net expansion rate, a measure of revenue retained from existing customers in the current quarter compared to the year-ago quarter, was 132% during the period.

While the results beat analysts' expectations, they don't seem to be impressive enough to prevent some investors from cashing out on a huge move higher in the stock price recently. Twilio stock is up more than 140% over the past six months -- including today's decline. It's not surprising, therefore, to see shares taking a breather.

Now what

Looking ahead, management expects strong growth to continue.

"We are just scratching the surface of this huge opportunity, and we believe the solutions being built today using our customer engagement platform will be the standard for digital engagement in the future," said Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson in the company's second-quarter earnings release.

For its fiscal third quarter, management guided for revenue to grow 36% to 38% year over year.