Basics

M. Cap: $696 million

Upland provides cloud-based enterprise work management software that enables organizations to plan, manage and execute projects and work.  Upland Customer Experience Management solutions enable organizations to manage customer relationships across multiple channels – including email, short message service, or SMS, multimedia messaging service, or MMS, web, social and mobile apps. Upland Sales Enablement solutions enable sales organizations to automate the delivery of processes, sales activities, content, systems and metrics at multiple stages of the sales process.

Impact of coronavirus pandemic

The company’s stock price has crashed over 40% in the past two months, most likely due to concerns over its massive debt load.

What we like/ Signs of moat

• Debt: $533 million, of which $521 million is due after five years.
• Recurring revenue with a long renewal period: The company’s subscription contracts are generally 1 to 3 years in length. The subscription revenue grew 180% from $48.6m in F.Y. 2014 to $136.6 million in F.Y. 2018. This could protect the company from a short-term shock.
• Retention rate: In the F.Y. 2018, the company’s retention rate was 98%.
• Huge customers: The company has over one million users with over 9,000 customers. Moreover, the company’s customer base is highly diverse and spans a broad array of industries.