The stock of enterprise voice services company AudioCodes (AUDC 6.52%) had a banner trading session on Tuesday. Following the company's release of its latest quarterly earnings report, investors piled into its shares, sending their value up in excess of 14%. That made it quite the outperformer on a day when the S&P 500 index only inched up by 0.2%.
Fourth-quarter results published
For its fourth quarter, AudioCodes booked $63.6 million in revenue, which was down 10% on a year-over-year basis but represented 3% growth over the third-quarter tally. Non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) adjusted net income was $8.9 million, or $0.28 per share. Again, that represented a decline (of 25%) from the year-ago period, but an increase (7%) over the previous quarter.
On average, analysts tracking AudioCodes stock were modeling only $0.24 per share for adjusted net income, although they were expecting a bit more on the top line -- their collective projection was nearly $63.9 million.
In its earnings release, AudioCodes attributed its sequential improvements to its Microsoft-related business; this grew by 5% at an annual clip, thanks in no small part to 10% growth in services within the big tech company's Teams collaborative software.
The company also benefited from its smaller customer experience and conversational artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, which posted double-digit growth figures. AudioCodes quoted CEO Shabtai Adlersberg as saying that the two have together "clearly emerged as a second major growth pillar in our business."
The future is AI
AudioCodes's bottom-line beat wasn't excessive, and it missed on revenue, but key segments for the company are clearly on the rise. Investors were likely most impressed by the sharp rise of the conversational AI products; this market is still very excited about the potential for AI to juice the performance of companies that harness the technology effectively.
