Table of Contents
This week’s earnings drop showed the messaging cohort growing topline at a steady clip while tilting the mix toward richer channels with fatter margins. Klaviyo is squeezing more dollars from existing customers and opening new geographies. Bandwidth notched its best quarter yet for seven-figure wins. Sinch pushed self-serve and RCS for the numbers to matter. Route Mobile proved that, at the right economics, mobile operators will gladly outsource RCS monetization. Tariffs and Apple’s looming RCS flip remain wildcards, but for now none of them see a direct hit.
The Good
Klaviyo’s revenue hit $281M, up 33% YoY, with gross margin at a buttery 78%. Customer count climbed 16%, with 3,030 logos above $50K in ARR and 1,000 logos above $100K, while net-revenue retention held at 108%. SMS wallet-share grew again, and international SMS volumes doubled in France, Germany, and Spain, without denting margins.
Bandwidth delivered $174M in revenue, up 7%, and nudged gross margin to 59%. Enterprise Voice jumped 26%, and Maestro, the AI Bridge, now sits in more than half of enterprise accounts. The team closed more $1M-plus ARR deals than in any quarter in its history. Net-revenue retention came in at 116%, average ARR per customer at $228K, and EBITDA grew 40% to $22M.
Sinch reported 6.4B SEK ($701M) in net sales and 2.2B SEK ($220M) in gross profit, both up 4% YoY in local currency. Self-serve gross profit grew 13% and now contributes over 15% of the total; large-enterprise logos rose 5%. RCS is now generally available, with 600M messages sent in the quarter, up 50% QoQ, while email remains dominant at 165B sends, with two migrations adding another 100B annually. Net-debt-to-EBITDA is down to 1.4x.
Route Mobile processed 126B multichannel transactions, signed exclusive RCS deals with Robi Axiata and Vodafone Idea, and ran record metro-ticketing traffic across WhatsApp and RCS. Management pegs “next-gen” products in a 30–80% gross-margin band and expects the Proximus acquisition to unlock continental Europe without needing to hire an army.
The Interesting
Channel elasticity has become muscle memory. Merchants and enterprises flip spend between SMS, email, and RCS as budgets flex yet keep context intact.
AI demos were in every call: Bandwidth let a synthetic CEO voice read part of its call, Sinch is rolling out live translation and agent assist, and Klaviyo’s brand-voice AI drafts copy inside the core platform.
Partner routes are beating brute force—MSPs are shortening Bandwidth’s sales cycles, Sinch landed Adobe Technology Partner of the Year again, and Route Mobile is scaling through carrier alliances rather than more field offices.
The Unknown
Apple’s iOS RCS launch could blow up US enterprise pricing or slide in quietly if carriers defend SMS cash flows. No CEO is willing to guess.
Tariff chatter is louder at Klaviyo, where import duties are squeezing some discretionary merchants, though messaging volumes haven’t budged. Bandwidth and Sinch remind investors that current tariffs target goods, not software, but both bake macro contingency into guidance.
In arbitrage plays, geography still bites: Route Mobile’s naira exposure and Sinch’s low-margin Indian SMS can erase gains when rates swing.
And while Klaviyo insists retention tools get cut last, a deeper consumer pullback would test every platform’s elastic-pricing promise.
Finally
Whoever cracks RCS pricing, keeps AI slick, and protects self-serve margins will shape the next leg of messaging. This week’s earnings shows the race is on, and the gap between bulk-SMS resellers and full-stack conversation clouds keeps widening. The industry so far remains tariff immune. Next week, we’ll see if LINK and Upland keep pace.
Disclaimer: This is not stock advice. Everything about the messaging business interests me, including asset pricing. Use your judgment to invest your money.