Zenvia Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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September 11, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Strong Q2 revenue growth of 24% year-over-year was driven by CPaaS expansion and early traction in Zenvia Customer Cloud.
  • Negative Sentiment: Short-term profitability was pressured by low-margin CPaaS volumes and carrier cost increases, pulling consolidated gross margin down to 24%.
  • Positive Sentiment: G&A expenses fell by 27% year-over-year, lowering the G&A-to-revenue ratio to 8.3% through workforce reductions and streamlining.
  • Positive Sentiment: Zenvia Customer Cloud revenues rose 23% in H1, on track for 25–30% growth and ~70% gross margin in 2025, aided by a new franchise channel.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company is evaluating divestments of non-core assets to optimize the balance sheet, with normalized EBITDA near R$100 million TTM and projected break-even cash flow by year-end.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Zenvia Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today, Shay Chor, CFO and Investor Relations Officer, will be our speaker, and both he and Mr. Cassio Bobsin, Zenvia's Founder and CEO, will be available for the Q&A session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and a replay will be available at the company's IR website, where you can also access today's presentation. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. For this Q&A session, we ask you to write down your question via the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. Your name will then be announced, and you'll be able to ask your question live. At this point, a request to activate your microphone will appear on your screen.

Operator

If you do not want to open your microphone live, please write down "no microphone" at the end of your question. In this case, our operator will read your question aloud. Now, I'd like to welcome Shay Chor. Sir, the floor is yours.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Hello, everyone. Thank you for being with us here today to discuss Zenvia Inc.'s second quarter and first half 2025 results. I am Shay Chor, CFO and IRO. Let's start with a snapshot of Q2 2025 performance, where you can see all the main financial KPIs of the period. As we pointed out in our first quarter earnings call, the second quarter delivered a financial performance following the same trend we saw in Q1. It was another period of strong top-line growth of 24%, mainly driven by CPaaS, and also highlighted by the continued advance with the rollout of Zenvia Customer Cloud. While we are making steady progress on the evolution of Zenvia Customer Cloud and on streamlining our operations in line with our plans, as I will detail in this presentation, it's important to recognize the environment we are operating in, especially on the CPaaS side.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

The market remains highly volatile and extremely competitive, which has been putting pressure on our profitability in the short term. Our SaaS gross profit showed an increase for the first time since Q2 of 2024, with margins slightly up year over year, but this was more than offset by the CPaaS sharp drop of gross profit and margin. As a result, consolidated adjusted gross profit fell to R$69 million, with gross margin down to 24%. Compared to Q1, this margin remains stable. That said, we see these pressures as temporary. With the initiatives already underway and with the continued scaling of our platform, we expect profitability levels to gradually recover and return to a more normalized level by the end of the year.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

This drop in adjusted gross profit was partially offset by a decrease in G&A expenses of R$9 million, or 27% when compared to the same period of last year. The combination of strong top-line growth and streamlining efforts brought our G&A to revenues ratio down to 9% of our revenues in the quarter. As a result of all these factors, our normalized EBITDA came in at R$11 million this quarter, below our expectations. We anticipate a progressive recovery throughout the year, and I will walk you through the reasons for that in the next slides. Here you can see the breakdown between our SaaS and CPaaS revenues. SaaS revenues grew 3% year over year in Q2, mainly from SMB customers. As you know, we are ramping up Zenvia Customer Cloud, our new core business launched in October of last year, and which is moving on as expected.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

We are proud to report that revenues from Zenvia Customer Cloud are up 23% in the first half of this year when compared to the same period of last year, accelerating from the 15% increase reported in Q1. We feel confident about delivering growth of 25% to 30% from Zenvia Customer Cloud in 2025, as we said earlier this year. On the rest of our SaaS business, we continue to see a tough and competitive environment, especially the enterprise segment in Brazil for our SaaS legacy solutions, which have been partially offset in the growth coming from Zenvia Customer Cloud. We believe that the strong value that Zenvia Customer Cloud delivers sets us apart in this highly competitive segment, and we're already seeing proof of that with the first dozen projects in the last couple of months that will help strengthen our SaaS metrics in the next periods.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Now, talking about CPaaS, the revenues were up by 33%, coming mainly from customers with tighter margins, and we believe this strategy will prove valuable over time as these accounts keep scaling without G&A costs. CPaaS accounted for 72% of total revenues, and this higher mix with low margin was the main responsible for the performance of our gross profits and margin, as we can see in the next slide. Here you have a comprehensive view on how gross profit and margin performed in the quarter, broken down by business segment. The first chart on the left shows the SaaS business. Adjusted gross profit was up 5% year over year to R$45 million in Q2, with adjusted gross margin also slightly up by 1 percentage point to 55%.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

This is the first quarter we are seeing positive gross profit expansion in SaaS since Q2 of 2024, driven by the transition into Zenvia Customer Cloud that I mentioned earlier. Another point I would like to go into more detail is the competitive landscape we are facing with enterprise clients in the SaaS business. As I mentioned earlier, this has been partially offset in the performance of Zenvia Customer Cloud. That said, as enterprises adopt Zenvia Customer Cloud, they quickly recognize the benefits of running their customer services on a fully integrated solution. For us, this has been translated into higher quality revenues and more profitable clients.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

The second chart in the middle of the slide shows the CPaaS performance that was again impacted by strong volume from clients with lower margins, coupled with the cost increase from the carriers that we mentioned last quarter, that is still being passed on to clients throughout the year. We expect to see CPaaS margins normalizing closer to 20% by Q4 of this year. Both performances mainly explain the drop in consolidated and adjusted gross profit and margin that you can see in the third chart. Moving on, let's now discuss our G&A, which helped offset a bit this increase in gross profit. When comparing the first half of 2025 with the same period in 2024, G&A expenses went down 25%, reaching R$48 million. If we exclude the R$8 million severance expense from Q1, this figure will be closer to R$40 million.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

We have been very diligent and strict with our expenses since the end of 2022, when we started our streamlining efforts. Our current level is now one-third of what it was in the first half of 2022, and less than half of what we recorded in the nine months of 2022. Also, as a percentage of revenues, G&A is now at 8.3%, down 16.2 percentage points from the 24.5% reported in the same period of 2024. Excluding the severance, the ratio would be at 7% of revenues. At the end of 2022, this ratio was around 18%. This strong performance is mainly related to the workforce reduction of approximately 15% announced in January that is expected to result in cost savings between R$30 million and R$35 million in full year 2024, already factoring in the severance expenses.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Now, looking into our EBITDA, we recognize this quarter came in below our expectations for the reason I just explained. However, when we look at the trailing 12 months in June in this chart, we can see a more resilient performance, especially considering the very volatile and competitive environment we have been navigating in the recent quarters. We are consistently delivering around R$100 million in normalized EBITDA in a 12-month period. In this sense, we are confident to be in the right direction to accelerate profitability from the second half of the year and create a solid foundation for 2026. Let me finish with the key takeaways to wrap up my prepared remarks. As we announced in January, when we disclosed our new strategic cycle, Zenvia Customer Cloud is our new core business, and 2025 is the year that we are ramping up the platform in Brazil and Latin America.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

We knew this process would take a toll on our short-term profitability, but we started to see first signs of performance already in this quarter. At the same time, we are making our operations leaner and stepping up our efficiency efforts, with AI playing a key role. It is shaping both how we deliver for clients and how we operate day-to-day inside the company. In a nutshell, our focus is clear: grow faster, scale smaller, and keep the leverage in the company. As for the CPaaS, market dynamics will remain volatile, but we expect profitability levels to gradually recover and return to a more normalized level by the end of the year. Back in January, we also shared that we are evaluating options to divest non-core assets. We see meaningful value in these businesses, and selective divestment could be an important lever to optimize our balance sheet.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Our goal with all these actions is to build a stronger company with solid metrics that translate into real value for our shareholders. With that, I'll wrap my prepared remarks and open the floor for your questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Once again, for this Q&A session, we ask you to write down your question via the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. Your name will then be announced, and you'll be able to ask your question live. At this point, a request to activate your microphone will appear on your screen. If you prefer not to open your microphone live, please write down "no microphone" at the end of a question, and our operator will read your question aloud.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Here we go. There are some questions here on the webcast. I'll start with them, and we'll keep going. Can you put a bit more color on forward guidance for Zenvia Customer Cloud? How's Q3 looking in Q4 in terms of bookings? How's the franchise channel doing? Are you still expecting to hit the R$200 million target with 65% to 70% gross margin range for the full year? Let me start here with some numbers, and then Cassio, feel free to add some qualitative points about Zenvia Customer Cloud, and there are a couple of other questions on it.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

In terms of numbers, as we said earlier in the year, in January, when we talked about the new strategic cycle and our focus on Zenvia Customer Cloud, we disclosed that we were expecting this business to be around R$200 million in revenues, with growth of around 25%, and gross margin close to 70%. We are keeping this, as you saw in our results here in the first half of the year. Zenvia Customer Cloud is growing close to 25%. It grew 23%. It is as we were expecting, and we continue to maintain our expectations of a business around R$200 million in revenues and gross margin around 70%, growing close to 25%. No changes, no changes to that. Cassio, I think it would be interesting if you can share some thoughts on how it is going.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

There are the questions here about if we changed anything since we launched the business in October. There was an acceleration of the business now in the second quarter. Can you share with us some qualitative points and your view on where we're going with Zenvia Customer Cloud?

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

Sure. Although we have this seasonality on the CPaaS side, when we look at Zenvia Customer Cloud, we're doing pretty well. We're excited with the whole performance of the business as we look not only on the revenue growth, but also on the usage of the software, which is very important in the SaaS model that is based on how much companies use our software. We're seeing a very strong adoption on this side. For instance, in Q2, we had around an 80% increase in total usage compared to Q1 in Zenvia Customer Cloud, which means this block of the stream of adoption of the software is going to bring results in the short to mid-term for our company. It's doing pretty well in that sense. About the franchise model, we launched that in Q1.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

We're still in the early days of this strategy, but it's already representing around 15% of our new MRR in Brazil, where it is the country that we launched the first of this model. Even though it's in the early days, it's already making a difference in new MRR. We have around 30 or so franchisees that made sales. We had zero in January, so we now have around 34. We're starting to test this model outside Brazil as well, where we have some partners operating in different countries, and we're going to evolve them into franchisees in the midterm. We expect this strategy to be, in the next couple of quarters, the main generator of new MRR for the business, which means we're building skill around Zenvia Customer Cloud. This is doing pretty well business-wise.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

That's why when we see the targets that we're having for mid to long term on Zenvia Customer Cloud being proved on the combination of new customers and software adoption, which of course translates into revenue. We're very excited about these results.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Thanks, Cassio. Another question here. On the CPaaS side, are these tight margins the new level, or should we expect some recovery? As I mentioned, and Cassio also just mentioned, CPaaS has been very competitive. We saw, and Cassio, correct me if I'm wrong here, but the last time we saw a business being that competitive was in the second half of 2022, when we saw a lot of pricing pressure. We are navigating this, and we understand that our strategy is the right one in terms of, and we've been accelerating revenues, which means we are competitive in pricing. Obviously, that puts some pressure on margins in the short term, but that's important from a relationship perspective, and that business helps generating EBITDA after all. It's important to keep that in mind.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Also, the first half of the year is usually when we have cost increases from the carriers, and we pass that through prices throughout the year. We expect later on the year, closer to year-end and Q4, to have passed through most of the cost increase that we suffered from the carriers, and therefore margins will stabilize at a higher level than it is right now. It's a commoditized business. It gets volatile. It gets pricing pressure from time to time. That was the logic behind, one of the logics behind our decision to move in the last strategic cycle, to move and to diversify revenues into a different type of business and adding value to the pure channel, which was the business back in late 2018, 2019.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

It's still a good chunk of our revenues, and it's important, although margins are under pressure, it's important because that business generates EBITDA. I don't know, Cassio, if you want to add anything on the CPaaS side in the market dynamics.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

Yeah, sure. We've been executing a long-term strategy, and we're sticking to the plan. There's, of course, the maturity of the CPaaS business model, which brings more pressure on the margins. It's highly competitive. There is the volatility that affects results. That's why we understand that when we compare with a SaaS business, which is also, of course, every business is competitive in software, but it's more stable, and we can grow a customer base and have a more recurrent revenue that's much more reliable in terms of forecasting. I understand that this strategy is why we IPO'd. It's the one that's been executing and is doing pretty well with the acquisitions, doing integrations, launching the new product that consolidates all that, and it's performing pretty well. I'll see that although we have this volatility, we're sticking to the plan, and it's working.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Another here for you, Cassio. On the enterprise side, how are you seeing the businesses on both Zenvia Customer Cloud and the rest of SaaS? How have the dynamics been?

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

Sure. On the SaaS, our business is pretty mature. It's low margin, high volume, and we've been able to keep enterprise customers as we are the main player, the more robust and reliable in Brazil. We are able to keep the best customers on board. That's why we have all this big revenue on the CPaaS side. When I look at SaaS, especially Zenvia Customer Cloud, we aimed initially into SMBs. That was the beginning of the launch of the product. As we brought this product and our whole experience with enterprise customers to some of our customers, they started to adopt as well. That's why we are seeing the adoption of Zenvia Customer Cloud by enterprise customers. That wasn't the initial focus, but it's doing well. Of course, sales cycles are longer.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

Adoption takes more time, but we're seeing that the combination of SMBs and enterprise customers for Zenvia Customer Cloud is also operating. It's a good, it's an upside on the initial strategy, and we're being able with the whole experience that the team has in serving these customers, being able to bring that to this new product.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Thank you there. Another one here. Could you, this is for me. Could you please provide some color on cash flow and divestitures? Sure. On cash flow, and we put on the presentation chart with it, if we look into our trailing last 12 months EBITDA, it's close to, on a normalized basis, it's close to R$100 million, which is pretty much the same level that we saw in the last couple of quarters, which means thinking about pure cash flow. EBITDA is about R$100 million in 12 months. There is about R$35 to R$40 million in CapEx that you have to exclude from that EBITDA. That leaves us with approximately R$60 to R$65 million in cash flow to serve the debt, which pretty much puts us close to break even by year-end. That's why we've been analyzing alternatives to divest.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

There's not much we can add on selling assets on top of what we already mentioned in our prepared remarks. We've been analyzing opportunities and looking into alternatives. If and when there is anything new to talk about, we'll let all the market and investors know about it. As of now, there's nothing we can add on this. How should we think about the potential divestment of CPaaS? In an interview, the CFO had mentioned that they tend to sell for one-time revenue, which would be more than $100 million. Is that achievable? That would put the company in a net cash position if you manage to sell it. Again, we can't discuss specifically any of the divestments that we have possibilities. I did mention historical, it is correct. I did mention historical transactions in CPaaS close to one-time revenue, but that's on a global basis.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

It's very, again, it depends on market conditions. It depends on macro environments such as interest rates, such as the volatility in the local market. It could range. We are looking more into divestment. It doesn't matter if it's CPaaS, if it's other SaaS that we don't see in the long term as relevant to the business. The reality is that asset divestment has to do with the leveraging balance sheet. It should be opportunistic to the leveraged balance sheet, as simple as that. We understand that all our assets are important. They add value to our clients. It's a matter of using this as a financial strategy to accelerate balance sheet leveraging and being able actually to have a better capital structure to accelerate Zenvia Customer Cloud. It's as simple as that. We are not sharing any numbers, any valuation now.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

What we can say is we are looking in an opportunistic way to the leveraged balance sheet. Hugo, can you repoll to see if there are any questions alive to be made?

Operator

Sure, Shay. If you have a question, please use the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen to write it down, and we'll open your microphone. If you prefer not to open your microphone, please write "no microphone" at the end of the question, and our operator will read it aloud.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Good luck. This is Hugo.

Operator

This concludes our Q&A session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Cassio Bobsin for his closing remarks.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

I still have a question. I'm not sure if I should ask this last one.

Operator

Sorry.

Shay Chor
Shay Chor
CFO at Zenvia

Yeah, yeah, it just came in. Cassio, what do you think the business will look like in two to three years?

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

Wow, what a nice question. What we've been working on is to have the core of Zenvia being built around Zenvia Customer Cloud. That means that we're working to provide companies a centralized way to manage all customer relationships, especially for B2C or massive B2B companies. This means providing software for marketing, sales, customer support, customer service, and customer engagement. Over time, it's a kind of technology that will be, although nowadays, it's different providers. It's very specialized providers. This is getting more unified. We're seeing this adoption of companies using just one provider to manage all of these relationships. As we're building this software, we see that it creates lots of benefits.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

When we put that in the context of AI and automation, the way we provide that for our customers is a way that helps them to automate and reduce costs, become more efficient, and provide more value to their customers. When we look from a business perspective, we're on the right track to be the AI CX SaaS provider for these companies. This means getting very sticky, getting recurrent revenues, which builds, of course, a strong business over time. We're not, of course, disclosing that in terms of finance, but we tend to move from these volatile revenues, low margins, to a recurrent, stable, high margin business. As we've been able to optimize the whole company, we're seeing that we're able to increase recurrent revenues and reduce G&A, which brings, of course, a combination of not only very strong growth, but with a high profitability on the whole business.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

That's what we're building. As a Founder and CEO, we're building the foundations, and we're seeing the results of this strategy. That's why I see that in the next two to three years, it's going to be a very different company financial-wise. We're seeing that operating in the early days of Zenvia Customer Cloud. We expect to have all this benefit in the next two to three years. With that, I also close here the webcast. Thank you very much for all your attention and to seeing the evolution of Zenvia. We've been building this strategy from long term. We're just starting a new strategic cycle with Zenvia Customer Cloud at its core. We expect that next couple of quarters, we are going to understand how this is all playing out to be a very strong AI SaaS provider for Latin America and the whole world. Thank you very much.

Operator

This concludes our Q&A session, and I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Cassio Bobsin for his closing remarks.

Cassio Bobsin
Cassio Bobsin
Founder, Chairman & CEO at Zenvia

I already closed my remarks, so that's it, guys. Thank you very much. See you next time.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Zenvia's IR team is at your disposal to answer any additional questions. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.

Executives
    • Cassio Bobsin
      Cassio Bobsin
      Founder, Chairman & CEO
    • Shay Chor
      Shay Chor
      CFO
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