Amid Wall Street's recent sell-off of growth stocks, Five9 (FIVN 0.25%) has continued to impress, and its shares have been more resilient than many of its fast-growing technology peers. Indeed, the cloud-based contact center specialist is one of the rare growth stocks that has recently had analysts scrambling to increase their 12-month price targets.
Analysts from Northland and Piper Sandler recently boosted their price targets for Five9 stock to $215 and $220 from $200 and $212, respectively. Those updates came after the company posted first-quarter results late last month that were far ahead of expectations.
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Accelerating growth
It would be difficult to overstate Five9's momentum. The company's revenue rose 33% in 2020 -- a significant acceleration from its 27% growth in 2019. Further, its quarterly year-over-year revenue growth rates have accelerated for the past four quarters.
Its most recent quarter was particularly impressive, with the company posting blistering year-over-year revenue growth of 45%.
"Our first quarter results exceeded expectations across the board," said CEO Rowan Trollope in Five9's earnings release. "We delivered record first quarter revenue of $138 million, accelerating 45% year-over-year, an all-time high."
Management said growth during the period was driven by the closing of more large enterprise deals and increased traction with its existing customers.
Five9's progress with large customers has been a major catalyst for its growth. Management has said the company's expansion rate among customers that generate more than $1 million of annual recurring revenue for it is meaningfully higher than the rate among the rest of its customers.
A step-change in management's full-year outlook
Another reason analysts and investors may be impressed with Five9 is the degree to which it boosted its full-year outlook. In its first-quarter update, management increased its revenue guidance for the full year to a range of $520 million to $550 million. At the midpoint, that implies 26% year-over-year growth -- up from the 20% growth the company was previously guiding for. And notably, management's guidance has historically proven to be conservative.
Trollope said on the Q1 earnings call that he believes there are three fundamental catalysts driving Five9's growth -- and none of them seem to be letting up. The first is market momentum, driven by organizations' ongoing digital transformations and their increasing adoption of cloud services. The second is the company's rapid product innovation. And the third is its aggressive investment in sales execution.
Given Five9's recent strong execution and management's optimism about the opportunities ahead, this company still appears to be early in its growth story.
