Now, I can get LivePerson on my watchlist, at least for this service. Even if times get tough, it almost feels like this isn’t the service they can really cut back on. It just seems like they offer a pretty compelling value proposition for some really important customers. What does this mean for enterprise customers? Yes. I mean the it’s just that the change in the macro environment and the idea of business continuity and then automation is now driving a different conversation. I was wondering if the assumption is that, that growth rate is sustainable even on higher numbers and then the cash generation can flow through on the sales productivity and the operational efficiency gains? It’s got over almost $400 million in cash on its balance sheet right now. Frankel: Right. This is a great model for customer retention, especially with those figures I’ve mentioned earlier. I’m sure nCino’s customer acquisition cost is not cheap. You cut services like that, you risk that customer defection and they typically aren’t going to come back. Like you said, over 40X sales. And basically, I saw messaging — you know, we’re all messaging our friends and family through Facebook or iMessage, and I said, you know, why can’t we do this with businesses?
What they really figured out was that, “Okay, we do credit cards, we’re doing loans, we’re doing everything, we’re a bank. But people are buying things, buying cars. Why don’t we try to help them buy a car? And then we’re going to get the transaction of the loan to a car. Why don’t we help them find a restaurant because they use our credit card?” They’ve proved out that conversational banking is really what I think is the real future. In fact, LivePerson was named to Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies list in 2020. Rob has been the CEO of the company since its founding in 1985, and joins us this week to talk more about LivePerson’s work with BELLA, a recently launched digital banking platform that’s a first-of-its-kind compassionate banking platform that prioritizes people over profit. Surely, the people that “invented” this spent a lot more in legal and patent fees than would the professor that would resolve the same solution in an hour.
When a lot of banks were pumping the brakes on spending, they’re still growing at over a 50% rate. The market assumes that it’s going to keep that 50% growth rate going for some time. Low-code automation takes a bulk of the manual labor off of the plates of IT and engineering teams and allows them to focus on the core functions of their departments to support the growth of an organization. Major League Baseball – MLB is the official regulatory body of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, overseeing 30 professional baseball teams in the American and National Leagues. Like you said, this is not a major short target or anything like that, but it is not a cheap stock. Frankel: I have to really be sold to pull the trigger on a growth stock. Frankel: For sure. It is important to double down on what you just said that this is not a cheap stock by any means. Only about 48% of that $92.3 million actually trades out on the open market, which means there’s about 44 million shares of trade. Of those 44 million shares that trade, you’ve only got about 3 million of those shares sold short.
It’s got a path to profitability, but it’s not there yet, so keep that in mind too. It has a clear path to profitability if it keeps going. And on top of that, like the investment is aggressive in that we’re going to use many different channels to hit our targets for the year. So, we have this vision, like the expert is the smallest of the small business, right? The big one, improving the overall efficiency of the business by 22%. If you’re worried about your profits over the next year or so, as most banks are in the COVID pandemic, you don’t want your efficiency to be reduced by 22% because you canceled this product. I want to see that their existing customers are spending more over time, which will indicate that they’re seeing value in the platform. There is an absolute switching cost that comes with using a business like this and if it’s taking away from what you are able to offer to your customers in the first place. As time goes on, you’ll see switching costs, you’ll see network effects.