According to a recent market report, the global cloud-based contact center market is projected to grow 25% annually from $6.80 billion in 2017 to $20.93 billion by 2022. Billion Dollar Unicorn Five9 (Nasdaq: FIVN) is a pioneer and leading provider of cloud software for contact centers.

Five9’s Offerings

Five9 was founded in 2001 by Gus Laredo, James Southworth, John Kim, and Ray Soto. It was set up to provide cloud-based solutions that could replace legacy on-premise contact center systems. Five9 offers a scalable and secure Virtual Contact Center cloud platform that provides easy-to-use applications for all of contact center-related customer service, sales, and marketing functions.

As explained by its former CEO and current Executive Chairman Mark Burklaud, it is a routing engine for customer interactions that intelligently distributes multi-channel interactions between the consumer and the agent in the contact center. Additionally, being a cloud-based solution, the platform also allows companies to migrate to its platform with minimal upfront investment.

Five9’s Financials

Five9 operates on a Software-as-a-Service business model, earning revenues through recurring subscriptions charged to its customers primarily on the number of agent seats and minutes of usage of its cloud platform. It recently reported its first quarter earnings where revenues grew 25% over the year to $58.9 million, against the Street’s forecast of $55.1 million. EPS of $0.08 was also better than the market’s estimated $0.03 per share.

For the current quarter, Five9 expects revenues of $55.8-$56.8 million with an EPS of $0.03-$0.04. It expects to end the current year with revenues of $235.8-$238.8 million and an EPS of $0.25-$0.30. The market was looking for revenues of $56.4 for the quarter with an EPS of $0.04 and revenues of $237.6 million and an EPS of $0.43 for the year.

Five9’s Competition

There is a lot of consolidation in Five9’s market segment. Two years ago, giants Nice Systems and Genesys Telecommunications both made big acquisitions in the space. Nice acquired InContact for $873 million and Genesys bought Interactive Intelligence for $1.4 billion. Then there is always the worry about Amazon entering the space. According to Five9’s CEO, Rowan Trollope, Amazon is already testing the waters with its Unified Communications space offering called Chime. It may still a far cry from the solution offered by the likes of Five9, but Amazon’s growth capabilities cannot be ignored.