Call center software provider Five9 Inc. has come up a winner yet again, comfortably beating Wall Street’s targets with its third-quarter financial results and delivering strong guidance on top of that.

The company reported a profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of 27 cents per share on revenue of $112 million, up 34% from a year ago. That was well ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of 18 cents per share in earnings and $101 million in revenue.

Five9 sells cloud-based contact center software and services for enterprises that enable them to keep track of and manage their interactions with customers. Its software covers traditional phone calls, as well as video calling services, emails and social media interactions.

The software is entirely web-based, and Five9 supplies the telephone hardware and phone lines too, which further simplifies things for customers. Enterprises simply pay a monthly subscription fee and do not need to invest in expensive infrastructure for their contact centers.

Five9’s business model has proved to be an ideal recipe for success during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the current quarter being its third successive earnings beat. It’s likely to be followed by another beat in three months too, as the company posted fourth-quarter guidance that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations by quite some distance.

For the fourth quarter, Five9 sees earnings in the range of 87 to 88 cents per share on revenue of $421 million to $422 million. Wall Street had forecast a profit of 78 cents per share on $367 million in revenue.

“Positive industry trends continue to accelerate and help drive our performance,” Five9 Chief Executive Rowan Trollope said in a statement. “The contact center is the new front door for many businesses. We believe the premise to cloud transition and digital transformation trends will accelerate, and demand for AI driven automation will increase, placing Five9 at the forefront of a massive opportunity.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that contact center providers are some of the big winners in the COVID-19 pandemic business world, and Five9’s 30% revenue growth is proof of this.

“What concerns me, though, is Five9’s costs have been growing faster than its revenues, and its loss has widened year over year, compared to being in the black just one year ago,” Mueller said. “At some point the management will have to put the cost brakes on, and that will be the moment of truth for this company.”

Five9 is hoping to expand its opportunities too. In addition to its earnings results, it announced that it’s acquiring a company called Inference Solutions Inc., which makes virtual assistant technology. It seems like a fit for its call center automation software, since Inference’s technology can handle many tasks that are normally performed by humans.

“Leveraging virtual agents to meet increasing customer interactions is rapidly becoming a requirement of the modern contact center,” Trollope said.

Five9’s stock was up 7% in after-hours trading.

Trollope spoke to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s video studio, during the in March 2019 Enterprise Connect event in Kissimmee, Florida, where he talked about the growing role of cloud computing in call center operations:

Photo: SiliconANGLE