8x8 has finished the financial year 2023 with a strong fourth quarter, with revenue growing two percent to $184.5 million.
The company’s $250 million acquisition of Fuze has started paying off, with $26.9 million of the total quarterly revenue and $111.3 million of revenue for the financial year.
8x8 can continue paying off its debts, reward its shareholders, and plough money into technological innovations.
Samuel Wilson, 8x8 Interim Chief Executive Officer, reflected on the past year:
“Fiscal 2023 was a year of milestones for 8x8 as we continued to invest in innovation while increasing our profitability and cash flow.
"We achieved record service and total revenue, completed the integration of Fuze operations, extended the global coverage of our communications platform, and introduced platform-wide integration of generative AI from OpenAI.”
Despite a couple of blips, such as its lower-than-expected total revenue last quarter, the year has ended on a high with a strong fourth quarter.
It is a far cry from FY 2020, Wilson reminded us, in which the company reported a non-GAAP operating loss of $61 million.
The 8x8 CEO has not been in the job long, taking over from Dave Sipes at the end of November last year.
The reasons for Sipes’ exit and, indeed, Wilson’s entry to the position were never publicised, but no doubt the board will be pleased with the latest quarterly results under Wilson’s stewardship.
Q4 in Review
Overall traffic for unified communications (UC) and contact centre (CC) has been increasing with a global network of carriers and an efficient traffic allocation model for carriers.
Wilson cast doubt on the findings of a U.S.-based wholesale carrier, which blamed a decline in voice traffic on a lack of demand from UCaaS Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders.
In March, 8x8 integrated AI across its products, including OpenAI’s Whisper model.
Intelligent Customer Assistant, Supervisor Workspace, and 8×8 Contact Center have also been integrated with AI/ML natural language tools.
Wilson commented on its work with AI and machine learning: “Artificial intelligence and machine learning have catapulted into the public eye with ChatGPT, but 8x8 has been preparing for this moment, building our experience and talents back along this potentially evolutionary technology lead.
“We are pursuing an ecosystem path and have partnered with a number of players, including most of the companies in the leaders of various quadrants with Gartner.”
AI and machine learning represent part of the offering underlying its “customer obsessed" branding that it launched in the past quarter, alongside agile workforce capabilities and customer experience solutions.
Agile workforce capabilities include the 8x8 work app, integration with Microsoft Teams, extending voice services to work-from-home users, enabling movement across devices and locations, and more.
